IN CAB CAMERAS

Good jam. "i work from 4-4 though, hey hell I pay the price".

 

The company I was just laid off from had them installed in the spring of this year. The location I worked out of was the last location in the company that got them, but they had been in use at the corporate HQ in Phoenix for almost a year and a half. Keep in mind this was a local / in-state position, not OTR.

They camers were called "DriveCam" and is the one seen most often in CMV's. They have a forward facing camera that looks out the windshield and an inward facing camera w/ fisheye lens and microphone. They can configured in a variety of ways, but ours were set up as such:

They were recording 24/7/365 and just looped 30 seconds at a time. If an event triggered a recording, the camera would save the 12 seconds prior to the event trigger and then 4 seconds afterwards for a total of 12 seconds. An "event" was anything that caused the gyroscope and / or accelerometers to exceed their sensitivity limit. The tractor-trailers were set at the highest sensitivity, the straight trucks were less sensitive, and the pick-ups were least sensitive. The smaller the truck, the quicker it could move and therefore the camera didn't need to be as sensitive to pick up the event. Typical events were quick lane changes, hard sudden braking, or turning corners too fast. However, I did notice that potholes would sometimes set the cameras off as well. The cameras would also record if a significant shock was felt while the truck was not moving, so for example, if you were parked somewhere and someone backing into you while you were not in the cab, the camera would record that. Additionally, if you needed to manually record something, you could depress one of the buttons on the bottom of the unit and it would record the same 12 second window.

At a specified time, say 3am every day, any events captured in that unit would be sent via the cellular network to the company and each event would be reviewed. If there was something obvious that caused the event, like hitting a huge speed bump at 3MPH, and the driver wasn't doing anything "wrong" then the company would consider the even "closed" and would discard it immediately. On the flip side, if you triggered an event by having to stomp on your brakes because you were texting on your phone while driving and didn't notice the car in front of you slowing down, that event was forwarded to our risk management department for review and if they also felt that the driver was in the wrong, the recording would be emailed to the branch manager who would then "coach" the driver.

80% of the events that our branch had recorded in the first 60 days after installation were simply discarded..nobody outside of DriveCam saw them. However, several drivers, including myself, were "coached" for things like taking turns at too high of a speed, eating while driving, inattentive driving, and a couple other things. Even though the cameras record constantly, as long as there is no event saved then the camera wouldn't actually transmit anything. Additionally, the cameras do not have the capability to stream video, so there's no worry about someone at your company loading up a web browser and watching you pick your nose.
As has already been pointed out, these cameras were not installed for the benefit of the driver, they were for the benefit of the company. Our company, and probably almost all others, got a reduced insurance rate. One of the biggest reasons why is that it cut down on fraudulent accidents. As an example we were shown after the cameras were installed, a driver in Phoenix was cruising down the highway and a 4-door car pulls up in front of the tractor on the driver's side and then jerks over in front of the tractor and immediately slammed on the brakes. Our truck hit obviously hit the car, that's what was supposed to happen, and the driver in turned filed a lawsuit for several million dollars claiming all kinds of nonsense..pain and suffering, loss of wages, emotional stress, etc. Our company played that recording in the courtroom and the case was immediately thrown out because it showed the car intentionally getting in the way of the truck through no fault of the truck driver.

Along with that, the biggest reason that there is a camera also facing the driver is so that the driver can either be held accountable or exonerated depending on the circumstance. Another example video we were shown was from a driver in Houston who was no longer employed with the company in large part due to the video. It showed him cruising down the road with a burger in one hand and a cell phone in the other. He was holding the wheel with one knee while "driving". There was an accident ahead of him on the highway and he didn't see it until it was almost too late. He did manage to drop both his burger and his phone in the process, but he did get on the brakes and jerk the truck over to the shoulder to avoid hitting anything. The reason this driver was fired was because that was the third instance of him having a similar event triggered and he was deemed to be an "unsafe driver".

Overall, they were hard to get used to at first because you feel like someone is always watching you, but after spending some time with it, I didn't even really notice it and I altered my driving habits just enough to where I could almost get right at the limit of the camera without triggering an event.

 

Very well written driver. The drive cam is set the exact same way at our company as well.

 

Yeah if you don't take a shower in your truck you should be ok

 

You're right!
Also, those trying to justify the cameras, especially the drivers defending them, is like the saying, "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

 

My great grandfather said if you play with a turd long enough, you're gonna get sh17 on your hands. I want my own cam(s). There is nothing to say that the company will give the driver access to their video if/she needs it. I want the cam(s) to protect myself against the company/law enforcement if that becomes necessary.

 

I'll go along with that; having your own cam where no one else has access to it except you. It's hard to fathom people actually welcoming a driver facing camera, "because it's for their own best interests."
It's like parents convincing a child, "This whipping is going to hurt me more than it is you."

 

I tell you, I don't like the driver facing cam, but as I am reentering trucking, I have to take what I can get. Everyone should understand that big business and government act in the same ways, through incrementalism. I remember when seat belt laws came out in Illinois in 1985, the police could not stop you for no seat belt. They could only write a seatbelt ticket if they had cause to make a stop for something else. Now the state police invade these small towns in large numbers for the sole purpose of raising revenue through seat belt tickets.