Effects of the ELD

The other reason we have hos. Its just like why we have osha, to prevent abuse of employees by employers. Without hos regulations we would see widespread abuse of drivers. Basically the majority would be in the position of run 20 hours a day or get fired.

We need hos regs. That's not debatable. What is debatable is the specific regulations. The 14 hour clock just sucks. Pretty sure we all agree on that. But the biggest problem I think is how inflexible it is. At the minimum we should have the ability to pause it for a few hours.

 

Wasnt that long ago that 18 to 20 was the norm. You could legally log 16 in a 24 hour day and 16 on paper was really closer to 20 in reality.

 

The point I'm making is the guy was driving 20 hour days with no problem. He was putting on 5,000 - 6,000 or so miles a week plus load and unload times, that's more than your 70 hours

 

The same argument was used 50+ years ago when they started with driving under the influence laws. It has been well established that operating a motor vehicle is not a constitutional right. It is a privilege that can and will be revoked.

 

We did 18 and 20 hours of trucking daily all the time pulling hoppers from the corn fields to the elevators a few years ago up in Illinois. In many states there are no limitations on hours you can work intrastate agriculture. No-one got hurt. Happens all the time in many agricultural states. And you are driving around these people and probably don't even know it. That probably makes a lot of elogging weasles here squirm but putting in hours like that is nothing out of the ordinary. Sure everyone needs a break from it eventually to rest up. Common sense applies.

 

I think we've all seen drivers driving too fast for conditions. How many are doing that to get somewhere before their time runs out on the elog.
On paper logs , if you run into bad weather or traffic etc, slow down and be safe and then log it like you didn't run into a problem. So, yeah, you broke the law by driving an extra 20-30 minutes and nobody knew.
But you did it safely.
Now you have drivers playing beat the clock.
I do believe we need hos rules, but I do hate the 14 hour rule. I think I would be reasonably satisfied if we could go back to the more flexible split break .
My problem : sometimes I like to take a nap and for me an effective nap is 3 hours. I usually don't have time for
that with the 14 hour rule.
I miss being able to take a nap and waking up with the same number of hours available as I had when I went to the bunk.
I think the 14 hour rule discourages stopping for a nap.
As a matter of fact , the driver is penalized by losing some of that days driving hours because he stopped to
take a break.
The 14 hour rule can actually encourage a driver to continue driving even though he's tired because that's when the government says he can legally drive.
I don't actually have an issue with elogs. I just want to have the flexibility to make intelligent , practical choices on when to drive or not drive. Currently, the emphasis is on hos compliance while ignoring most everything else.

 

Agree with basically everything you said with one exception. The morons speeding are not doing so because of the elog. That elog isn't holding a gun to their head. They are doing so cause they made a decision to get the last possible mile or of the day when they could of speed 30 miles back. The elog is just their excuse for the bad chooses inviolable their right for on the accelerator.

Like you said, the elog isn't the problem. The problem is the current inflexible hos regs. Hopefully when the law is in effect and highway safety doesn't improve, as we all know it won't, then we can move the conversation along to fixing the hos regs.

 

Well, not yet hopefully.....

 

Yes, but unless you were on the go fast, you got the rest you needed, when you needed it. I'm not advocating the way it was, but it wasn't the cancer to trucking like it's made out to be.