Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

Yeah some of our trucks had them. Most drivers tore them out though and there was not much repercussion from management. The cameras only faced out and they really couldn't use them against us if something happened. Even if, we had a guy that ran over a vehicle after running a red light and then went about his day without stopping. Management fired him and he was back two weeks later.

The dude was fired two previous times and like my psycho ex girlfriend, he kept coming back. He was finally gone for good when the company tanked, but then again so were the rest of us.

 

Speaking of cameras. The newer ones they now have are WILD. They used to tell us that management can't possibly hire enough people to monitoring them all each time we want to pick our noses. It turns out they don't have to with Artificial Intelligence powering these newer generations of babysitters.

We used to run Lytx but since have changed to Samsara, and man are they hellish. They catch everything. I know someone mentioned fatigue, and sure enough I was called in cause at some point I was stretching my arm behind my head and yawned. Then another time I had my phone sitting on the passenger seat and I reached over to swipe the screen right to skip a song I was streaming, and sure enough I got called into the office.

"Blah blah blah we have a no cell phone policy blah blah".

I wasn't ON my phone, I just caught a bad tune that was streaming and I felt the need to skip it

"I don't care about that blah blah. Hands free means don't touch your phone".

It was Miley f#### Cyrus, what's the expectation here? That I finish listening to it?

Then later on I found out that you can control the songs that are streaming with the buttons on your radio. I squinted at the fainted buttons and BAM, next song!

But sure enough, "R/R report to management ASAP". Samsara flagged me for distracted driving. They pulled up footage of me looking at my radio and fumbling with the buttons briefly. The wild thing is that these machines don't even alert you or do the flashing lights when things get recorded. You just find out a day or even a week later of your infractions.

Now here is where it gets downright nasty. I talked to another driver from a different company that has the same setup. Samsara has everyone on a giant spreadsheet and ranks them with a safety score. Anything that it catches goes against your score. Once your score drops below a certain number (I think he said 70), and they terminate your employment.

I mean think about it. Over a 30-day period you can have some speeding, maybe a few hard brakes, and a questionable stop at a stop sign and then find yourself fired without ever being close to an accident.

It's wild.