It's official...no inward facing drive cam starting tomorrow

On another note I have been complaining about these systems since before they went swift wide. I'm glad they at least killed the inside cam if nothing more but audio off as well would be nice.

 

And the amazement continues, with people thinking that others are actually spending the money and employing people to listen 24/7 to every conversation being conducted in a truck.

Even the driver facing cameras were a non-issue for me when my own videos started rolling in.
A big bounce when I hit a hole at a shipper/receiver and I wasn't buckled in, or a hard braking event to stop when the light turned red when I could do it safely.
And me, just going about my day doing everything normally.

So what if there is audio?
Do you really think they are actually listening to your fluff conversations?
You should be more concerned about the government monitoring for key words, than Swift trying to get dirt on their drivers.

 

How do you refrain from picking your nose man? You must tell us your secrets

 

I am going to take heat for my opinion but here goes. First, let me say I have been a driver for 25 years, just recently left the industry, and I have worked for very short periods of time at two mega carriers, JB Hunt and Crete. I never have had a company owned camera in any of the trucks I drove as an employee. I did put cameras in company owned trucks myself. I also put them in trucks driven by my employees when I owned my small fleet.

Now for what is going to get y'all riled up. Why do we as drivers have the right to get upset with cameras in our truck, driver facing or forward facing? Is that truck not company property, even the lease-purchase trucks? Doesn't your dispatch, office, and shop staff report to work in a company owned building with security cameras all over the place? Don't we all go to WalMart and other places with audio and video surveillance every day without loosing our minds? Even the kid at McDonald's or the 7-Eleven works under constant surveillance.

So, why do truck drivers have the right to resist security cameras in their work place but everyone else has learned how to deal with them? We are not at home or on vacation and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the cab of a truck except and until you are off-duty and using the sleeper bunk. Courts have already decided that we have no expectation of privacy with regards to search and seizure and that the normal workplace rules extend to remote workplaces such as motor vehicle cabs.

My drivers fought me on the cameras as well, and I pointed out to them that I also sat under a video camera in my office as did our mechanics, dispatcher, even the janitor at night. Sorry, but a truck is a workplace tool not your own private space. I also pointed out that they are working and being compensated for such, and as the guy signing the checks I expected them to work and not be socializing on the phone, surfing the web, and I darn sure expected them to be driving safely and exactly as if I was sitting in the seat right next to them. Nothing I didn't do when I was a company driver myself.

 

No they were not trying to get rid of experienced drivers with the a drive cam.
If I had to guess why they did it. And this is only a guess if the front facing camera did show that the driver really wasn't at fault. I bet I most of the cases that did go to court they would probably win. But it's driving facing camera that probably bit them in the ###.

Because we all know how lawyers can get they were probably saying look he didn't look at his mirrors right.

then during discovery they can go back as far they have saved videos and go over all of them and then they look back on all the minor little things that that driver did not scan mirror maybe ate or drank something going down the road and then that would just put it out into the jury and say look he's an unsafe driver. In cases that they would have won with this the outward facing camera they would lose because of the driving facing camera.

Of course this is just a guess but I think it's a little bit more into reality than your tinhat conspiracy theories and let me guess Swift is part of the Illuminati and do they have a Star Chamber

 

You think people shouldn't be allowed to get upset?

Courts decide lots of things, doesn't mean we have to agree with or like what they decide.

A company has a right to monitor their drivers. The driver can accept it or the driver can quit. I know I would quit. Whether that would be a rational response or not depends on your perspective.

 

I don't get why it is so difficult for people to understand this, so let's try it one more time. The cameras do record constantly on A CONTINUOUS LOOP. For those who are a little slow here, that means that the camera records, FOR EXAMPLE (meaning this is not exact information, but an example of how it works), a minute or five minutes of footage and then goes back and records over that data that it just recorded. In case of a critical event, 20 seconds (for Swift, 16 seconds for my current company) of that recorded data is saved. Now here is the important point, PAY ATTENTION KIDS....if you go thru the entire day without triggering a critical event, you will never save any of that recorded data. Therefore, if you don't trigger a critical event, the data is not saved, no one will ever see you eating or drinking, picking your nose, talking on the phone, singing with the radio, or "extra curricular activities" when your parked. Same as the audio recording. No critical event=no data saved including audio or video.

So the key here is to be a safe professional driver, don't trigger a critical event and you'll never have a saved video. Why is this so hard to understand?

 

umm, I think almost everyone does understand that.

 

And yet everyone is still crying about being spied on or listened to, or caught picking their nose.

The point I was trying to make is that NO ONE is capable of spying on anyone, aside from the fact that companies don't really want to spy on anyone. Companies do have a right to put cameras in their trucks, and with more and more companies beginning to use them, you either learn to accept them or you buy your own truck.