Cell Phone Citation - anyone ever got one - what was the ticket

This is part of the reason we have ELD.
Too many violations because,
People can't do simple math.

 

Yeah I know but there is really no excuse not to know what you have left on your drive line.

 

My former company the owner got caught talking on his phone. Even though as the safety director I had all the drivers sign saying they understood it was against company policy to use their phones without hands free they fined him $1100 as a driver and $11,000 for the company and as the owner he was allowing himself to use his phone. The letter he signed was irrelevant because he was the owner.

 

That was in Virginia and he was based in Pennsylvania . The coo saw him on his phone and drove past him to the weigh station and pulled him around back.

 

So all the money went to Virginia?

 

According to the safety guy at my work that’s the primary reason companies are fined so much. They want the company to fire the driver.

 

i dont care who calls me while im driving and that includes my boss. the notification will pop up on my phone and i will call the party back as soon as i get to my farm. i generally check my phone every time i stop, which is fairly frequently. i dont want the distraction of handling the phone while im driving a commercial vehicle PERIOD. i will admit my job is probably unique from most here that i dont drive for hours at a time without stopping. i have also pulled over the to the side on one of those rural roads, put the hazards on to take a phone call, so long as it was not high traffic area. at any rate that thing wont be pressed to my ear while driving a CMV.

my boss is very understanding and knows i will call him back at the next safe haven. it surprises me how many rigs i pass all day with the driver having a cell phone pressed to his ear. i dont know how or why you would want to deal with that. maybe that's one reason manual transmissions are better, they force you to use your entire body and pay more attention to what you are doing. an automatic just frees the driver up for more distractions.

 

Yet, DOT regs require your eld to mounted and easily visible from the drivers seat.

 

As I understand it, use of a HAND HELD phone is the issue. I use my smartphone frequently, with a Bluetooth headset, while I drive. I have the phone on a magnetic mount that's strong enough to withstand tooth breaking off-road driving.

With the touch of a finger I can speed dial a frequently called number, consult MyRadar to see if the blizzard will let up anytime soon or see where a supercell storm might become a tornado, use Trucker's Path to see if parking is available ahead, Fuel Book to find the cheapest fuel, etc. Answering a phone call only requires me to say, "Answer"!

I don't get it. Why are professional drivers NOT mounting the phone to the dash for hands free operation and using a headset?

 

I am curious about the phone or tablet as an ELD. The ELD specification says the device must have a USB 2.0 jack available to download the logs. Is there an adapter? I haven't seen a tablet or a phone with a USB 2.0 port.