Would you quit if forced on eLogs?

I have said, and will continue to do so.

EOBR's and Elogs do nothing that shouldn't already be done on paper except make it considerably harder to lie about HOS.

 

The accident that killed the 11 people in KY was caused by a truck crossing the median , not rear ending . However it is BS to say the cause was a cell phone . I say it was fatigue .
From an article where the driver's wife attempted to show what a safe driver he was . It should be noted he was on duty for an unknown amount of time Thursday picking his truck up at the shop .

"Sometime around 4 p.m. Thursday EDT, he headed south on I-65.
At 10:30 that night, he called Misty again.
"He was somewhere in Indiana. He was getting ready to stop and get some sleep," she said. "He did not have an appointment time for Cullman, so he wasn't real concerned. He wasn't in a hurry. He'd already been off for 72 hours."
It is likely he was in southern Indiana.
It's 369 miles from Lansing, Mich., to Louisville, Ky., a trip of about 6.7 hours at 55 mph, 5.9 hours at 62 mph.
It's about 75 miles from Louisville to Munfordville, Ky., where the accident took place.
At 4:28 a.m. Friday, Misty's cell phone rang.
It was Kenneth.
"He's wired. Good morning, he says," Misty recalled. "I said to him, 'why are you calling me at 4:30 in the morning?' He thought it was 5:30 because coming through Kentucky, he'd been in the Eastern time zone and his phone clock had not changed to Central time yet. I said, 'let me start the coffee pot and I'll call you back.' And I did. I talked to him until nine or 10 minutes before the wreck."http://www.thetrucker.com/news/stories/2010/11/22/Truckernotonphonenorspeedingwhenwreckoccuredfamilysays.aspx
Can somebody tell me what's wrong with this picture ?

 

He was within HOS. He started at 1600 and, after having taken a nap at around 2230, continued on. He called his wife 12.5 hours after starting his shift. The crash happened, according to the wife's account, around 0500. That's 13 hours into his shift, one hour short of the 14 hour limit.

Additionally, this was an experienced driver, not running with a large "BFI" company.

So, what's the point?

 

Rat e-log also keep a company from doing what they have you do. By your own words you are willingly driving illegal. If someone else has a fatality in a wreck DOT will impound the truck and do a thorough inspection of everything. That can some day come back on you even if your not the one in a wreck. They can and do issue citations to drivers and everyone else involved in those runs that are illegal. I have also seen a change in most not all shippers and receivers to get the trucks loaded and unloaded.

 

I am scared of elogs. I know they are coming and I hope I can cope with them. You see I dont follow the HOS rules. Oh sure I log them correctly but thats not what I acualy drive. Those rules are writen by a man who works 8-5 5 days a week. They are written for a man on a set schedule. They dont take into consideration the many varitables in a drivers life.

I'll take last night for example. I stoped at a rest area last night and went to bed. Now I slept for a good 8 hours. However I did not want to sit around there for anouther hour and a half before my 10 hours where up. I was hungry. So I drove anouther hour to the next truck stop, parked and ate. And when I leave here I will log that I took my full 10 hours off at my first stop and did not take a break here.

Yes I falsified my log. I lied. does that make me an unsafe driver? I only drove 10 hours yesterday, so I could have driven that xtra hour to the truck stop last night so I would not have had to lie this morning. However that would have been the unsafe thing todo. I was tired last night, and decided then was a good place to call it a night before it became unsafe.

by being able to lie on my logs like this I am able to run safer. I dont want to risk my life, I happen to like it. I fear switching to Elogs is going to make it so instead of doing what I did, I will have to run that xtra hour the night before.

 

You missed my note stating while he started driving at 1600 he was on duty picking his truck up at the shop before that .
Not a large BFI co. , Hester was a small , raggedy ### company .
http://dev.thegazette.com/tag/mennonites
http://articles.boston.com/2010-04-01/news/29298385_1_kentucky-crash-safety-score-safety-rating

 

The only thing Elogs will do is put me out camping alot more then I want to .

Them 700 mile runs, the boss will have to tell me a little sooner, I will have to leave the day before, get to the load site, take a 10, then get up and hump back to the plant and turn and burn back as far as I can make it then stop for another 10.For less then 200 bucks a day. I took this job because I did not have to live in a truck to get the job done. If I wanted to live in a truck then I would have kept hauling cars on my own.

The 660+ mile runs will mean no taking it easy on the run, I will have to drive, drive and drive to stay under the 11 hour driving time. This will piss me off because of the other reason I got into trucking 10 years ago. No more checking out the views and sites while on a run. My driving will have to be slightly to more aggressive which makes me more fatigued on the return leg. It is not like I can hop on the superslab and hammer down and not worry about meeting vehicals or worrying about oncoming traffic while trying to make a pass or worrying about that 4 wheeler that is coming off a side road, or dealing with towns etc.

It is so much easier for me to slow down a bit, this gives me more reaction time for other things on the road and I don't have to be on the edge of my seat all the time.

Elogs won't make ME a better, safer driver!

 

I spoke with a friend of mine earlier and he told me about one major carrier that is considering taking the EOBR's out of their trucks. It seems that their loads are late being picked up and delivered and shippers are not happy. Driver pay has also dropped and they are not happy. Insurance companies are seeing more moving violations and that is not making them happy. Apparently, drivers who use elogs are trying to make up time that they are losing on elogs and are getting tickets. That is making some insurance companies nervous over potential claims.

 

I think a large part of it is the 14hr rule. Some drivers are better than others at using the split break to help out with that but I think most of the headaches are due to drivers having to shut down early because their 14hr clock was up.