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.

 

First of all, thank you for writing up that explanation, although I was aware that management can set parameters on how sensitive it is. I remember my first week of it and I remember I scored a 0% because I do 5 hours of interstate driving with the speed limit being 70 and Samsara was initially programmed to flag me if I went over by just 1 MPH (I left my cruise on at 76 or whatever the flow of traffic was).

I honestly have to push back on your last point though and it does tie in with my overall stance on these things. What you or I find unsafe is completely subjective. I could justify an abrupt lane change for a kid chasing a ball and could get coached on how I should have anticipated pedestrian traffic better, I could justify speeding up to create a gap behind me to let another truck merge and still be coached for speeding, I could also hard brake for a dog crossing the road and be told to run it over next time (which did happen to me at an earlier job). The list is endless because I could be objectively right but also subjectively wrong at the same time. We as drivers have to make trillions of corrections and decisions on a daily basis and the people that make up these rules are Monday night quarterbacking this at best. Of course it is easy to point out everything I did wrong after the fact. Hell, had I known ahead of time that certain driving events would happen, I would have prepared and reacted differently. I mean, we get crapped on enough when something doesn't get delivered/picked up or if DOT flags us for something stupid. Yet now they are adding on to it by disciplining people because they aren't perfect.

There is something profoundly Orwellian about all of this. Every company I worked for had a 2 or 3 accidents a year policy before they booted you. Now a computer aggregates your driving habits and then reports you, even if you never got into an accident or received a citation. We actually DID fire someone two weeks ago for speeding. I was told that management wanted to get rid of him and Samsara finally gave them the justification to go ahead with it. And I am not saying he should or shouldn't have been fired, I just find it almost gross that you have something that is artificial that is there with the sole purpose of waiting for you to do something wrong or misjudge something and then report you once you meet or exceed a certain threshold.

 

Even that is subjective. I worked for a flooring distributor back in 2018 and we had older versions of Lytx (the ones with the red disco lights where the camera talks to you). Anyway, a dog with a collar came out of nowhere and I hit the brakes pretty good. The camera instantly did the red strobe lights and said "hard brake". The dog lived to fight another day and I was like cool, I am sure management will understand.

Sure enough I got talked to the next day. I told my old boss that the dog had a collar and thus was someone's pet. I was subsequently told that I was hauling expensive products that we can't afford to get damaged, so next time, run Fido over."

My hard brake was still held against me, although I didn't stick around long enough to see what the repercussions were if I kept doing it.