• 06
  • July
    2011

Fatigued truck drivers cause terrible trouble on the road. The truck accidents that result from poor decisions by sleepy, worn-out drivers take many lives every year and cause thousands of injuries.

We don't intend to demonize these drivers. We understand they are under a lot of pressure. But they should not be violating hours-of-service limitations. And they should not be given the temptation to alter logbooks that should accurately record the hours a trucker actually works.

To remove that temptation from truckers, and improve safety on the road, federal regulators are looking to an electronic tool. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is finally getting serious about this. The agency is testing an onboard driver monitoring tool intended to gather better data than ever before on how trucker drivers really drive.

FMCSA is in the midst of a multi-year research study that measures how drivers perform in vehicles equipped with electronic onboard monitoring systems. A total of 270 trucks, from three different carriers, are involved.

The onboard system is designed to do more than ensure better record keeping by truck drivers. The system is interactive and provides electronic warnings to drivers on things like lane departures and forward collisions. And yes, it does also contain observation systems that are supposed to detect driver fatigue.

In an onboard system like this, truck drivers are no longer solitary cowboys out there on the interstate range. They are, rather, key human actors in a larger regulatory system. In that system, protecting human lives is just as important as turning the wheels of commerce.

Source: "FMCSA Testing Driver Monitoring Systems," Trucking Info, 6-30-11