Camera? Not on my watch

The camera is triggered however the company wants it to be triggered.

 

Yes, I remember back in 1980 I was working for a Great Dane dealer in fla. Seen the first abs and disk trailer brakes.. junk . Abs would just get disconnected. Nobody remembers what trucks were like 30 years ago and how fast we voluntarily adopted technology, ex. Going from split rims , radial tires, power steering, a/c. , engines that don't blow a gallon of oil on a trailer every 1000 miles . But it's never enough, the lobbiest have actually slashed the life of a truck to less than a decade before it is no longer feasible to continue replacing these emissions experiments forced on us. The price of a truck has skyrocketed in the last ten years . The upkeep of the emissions and adding DEF voodoo science to make an engine eat 70% of its own feces is absolutely outrageous. In less than 2 years a diesel engine turns into a carbon boat anchor.

 

Then what's the point in having a job that keeps you hundreds of miles away from the boss? Certainly it's not the money. Trucking is all about the freedom of not having your boss breathing down your neck all of the time. Watching your every move. Why would you be OK with them eliminating that freedom?

 

I worked for mostly small companies under 70 units the last 29 years. It wasn't that they were Outlaws or Mavericks. In fact they never payed the most per mile.
After 6 years in the military ,I started with a Big Company "80's", slow underpowered trucks, you lumped your loads or paid out of pocket after the first 25 or 40 dollars ... i was just a number. It was nothing like I had seen growing up with our families fleet and the way I remembered it in the 60s 70s .
The minute I got a ride from a small fleet and real trucks ,everything changed. Nobody was telling me twice a day on a dirty phone where to fuel and how many gallons or wanting my hours. I was no longer sitting for days in a terminal bunkhouse with 50 other company drivers , prison showers . You had to bribe a dispatcher or run to Sparrows Point loading flatbeds all day just to get out.
The small company with the Big Iron gave you plenty of rope to hang yourself if you were a fraud. They gave you cash for fuel or open CC and turned you loose to decimate the freight lanes . You called the brokers now negotiated loads . You had nobody to blame but yourself, and you learned a lot real fast.
To me it was about trust . And of course, finding the company that screwed you less than others.
The trust is basically all gone now. No loyalty. It's all about mergers , share holders and made up 6 figure positions in a company that sees less than 7% profits. And where does that put us ? Expendable cannon fodder.....
The cameras might get them out of paying a huge lawsuit but they will pay a % . You don't just turn over the 10sec of the actual accident during Discovery. The good lawyer will want everything on the drive.
But until that day comes, the camera will be the judge and jury for any misstep a driver makes no matter how small. And it will be on his company record in the event of cost cutting some day. Or taking your bonus.
The industry played right into the hands of insurance companies and the FMCSA. How did we let ourselves as humans become so dependent on intrusion of privacy? Why do we even have curtains on our windows?

 

Thank you basketcase64...
So that means EVERYTHING on that drive system of the camera can be recorded in time frames longer than the actual time of accident trigger event

So ANYTHING the driver does that can be considered unsafe CAN be held against the driver

So basically the driver doesn't have much ground to stand on when it comes to qualifying for that safety bonus or the company has all the proof they need to lay all the blame on the bad driver in case of a bad accident

 

Depends on the media used and how many times it has been written over. But as you lay in the hospital or grave, they will look at everything that drive or card had on it and if it goes to the cloud ??? That's a whole different animal. If a driver thinks the cam just dumps everything but the crash??? Then they took A Hillary Clinton computer class.
Really isn't anything different from a spying Web cam when you think about it. . The company can already watch your truck and reefer in real time, now they have video when they need it.

 

I don't mind the GPS tracking device or I wouldn't mind acameras on the outside, like a 360 view system, but having a camera on the driver's face during an accident is only going to show a driver with a "oh crap " look on his face

 

Take the fuse out, replace with blown fuse. "I have no idea how that fuse blew!"

 

'Cuz... nobody ever thought about that when they designed the system. Really?

The Drivecam system checks in periodically even when there is nothing to transmit. They will know if the system is not running.

 

Then we suppose they give alittle yank on the leash and route the driver to the nearest terminal, immediately, for repairs and putting the blow torch on the driver and have that driver camping in a parking lot 800 miles from home