Getting Back on the Road from the Shoulder....

I hadn't considered that, it could have been that the parked truck had just finished their 30 minute break. Still, not sure why they would choose to take the break there rather than at one of the three truck stops about 20 miles prior that they passed up.

I do think a lot more drivers are parking on the shoulder for their breaks, #1, it is monkey see monkey do like, they see everyone else doing it and so they do it too, but also #2, some states forbid parking on an on/off ramp or at the weigh station, so drivers have figured out that it is less illegal to park on the shoulder and still be able to max out their 11 hour drive clocks. Dispatchers and Planners expect drivers to run the full 11 hour nut every shift.

If we go back to the origin of the 11th hour, it was never meant to be used a production driving hour; the intent was a driver would max out their 10 hour drive clocks then use the 11th hour to find legal parking.

The advent of electronic logs, dispatchers pushing for that 11th hour of production driving, competition from all the low rate mega carriers, and even the automatic transmission that has taken over, the actual pace of trucking has changed in the last 10 years.

When we were on paper logs, there wasn't this full speed rush to accelerate everywhere you went, especially in truck stops. Plus the manual transmission, when shifted smoothly and properly, had a certain measured pace as you worked up through the gears. You might get up to third gear in the truck stop and ease back out to the highway, under little pressure because you moved the line on the paper logs to build in some slack time so it wouldn't penalize your clocks.

Now, drivers just put the transmission in D and press the go pedal to the floor everywhere they go especially racing through truck stops, because the ELD is ticking constantly. They go til the clock says stop and park where ever that might be even on the shoulder of the interstate. When it is time to go they count on the courtesy of other traffic to move over to the next lane to let them back onto the highway. They get away with it day after day over and over til something like what I saw, a driver going about 77 miles per hour had no out and lost his life for no good reason.