Hours of service questions and answers

who says you're taking your 34hr reset at home? If i were to do that, i'm taking it wherever my last load was. Odds are, i wont be home when i'm 'forced' to take a restart. in an 8.5 hr day...you SHOULD be able to run no fewer than 450 miles a day. least it would feel like a normal work day. and not grind yourself into a 12-13 hr day, take a restart in BFE, Illinois 100s of miles away from home with nothing to do for a day and a half. And the odds are you'll be sitting for 2 days solid waiting to get rollin' again. I got better things to do than to sit 2 days watching "Kill Bill vol 1&2" over and over. I'd rather stay busy. if that means 7-9 hr days...so be it. while you're sitting taking a restart, i'll catch up or even pass you by. the turtle and the haire.

 

You're right. I shouldn't have said "universally." But I do believe what I said applies to the vast majority of drivers out there. HOS rules exist because the DOT apparently agrees with me.

 

If you look at a people who drive 8 hrs every day, those drivers will have 0% accidents after the 8th hr. If you were to look at people who drive 16 hrs a day the statistics would have meaning. I'm not shrugging you off... because you may be correct. But statistics can be manipulated to the point where they turn out to be lies. A more meaningful statistic would compare the amount of time spent driving during those periods to the number of accidents because if you spend 5% of your time driving more than 9 hrs, a 12% accident rate would be worse than 87%.

 

Wow, you need to let FMCSA know there completely wrong, they think the first hours is more dangerous.....

Is it easier to write when you create the stats as you go, just curious.

Your right at being able to make stats say what you need them to say, you always have to follow the money.

 

97% of statistics are made up! Including this one.

 

When I was a warehouseman working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, everything was cool.

Then we went to six 10's. Everything was still cool, more work got done, but people were tired and productivity dropped.

Then we went to seven 12's. Everybody was irritable, productivity was low and I even seen a few fights.

I had other 7/12 jobs and it was the same thing.

The human body just isn't meant to work so many hours day in and day out.
This is the main reason you see/hear so many irritable drivers and wrecks happen. It doesn't matter beginning shift or end of shift. It's the fact that you are tired 24/7 from all the hours worked.

The gov't wants to keep cost down and save lives at the same time. It just doesn't work. You can tweek logbook rules all you want and it does no good as long as we work 70+ hours a week. If they really want to save lives, they need to cut the hours back, increase the pay and keep the crazies out of the business.

 

I'll try one more time... Let's say you have a job where you never drive more than 8 hours in a day. That means statistically you will never ever have an accident after the 8th hour. This would seem to indicate that driving your first 8 hrs is where all your risk is and that it would be desirable to drive an infinite number of hours after your first 8 are done. Statistics are meaningless without proper context.

 

You're talking nonsense. Go read the report... pay attention to Figure 2.

 

I did read the article referenced in the original post or were you referring to something else? And of course I'm talking nonsense. What I don't know is whether the REPORT is legit or nonsense. If you spend 87% of your time driving hours 1-8, and 12% of your time driving hrs 9-12, then if you have 87% or your accidents in hrs 1-8, and 12% of your accidents in hrs 9-12, your risk of having an accident in any particular hour (1-12) is the same. The information that is missing and which would make the statistics meaningful to me, is how much time was spent in hours 1-8 compared to how much time was spent in hours 9-12. Maybe that doesn't concern you though.

 

Could you post Figure 2 so I can see what you are talking about? Could be that I will ultimately agree with you...maybe I missed the info that would clear this whole thing up.