Civil rights and legal challenges

Is that a legal parking area? If you're sitting on an on/off ramp or shoulder, aren't you displaying that you want to be inspected/ticketed??

 

There are trucking companies that will outright terminate a truck driver for having a "lot lizzard" or any other type of prostitute inside of their sleeper cab, and rightfully so. It is an absolute safety hazard as far as sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and other highly contagious communicable diseases are concerned. One example of a highly contagious disease is tuberculosis, or TB for short.

Another safety hazard is the possibility theft from the truck, especially freight.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, the driver puts himself at risk at the possibility of being murdered either by the prostitute or by any "friends" or "cohorts" setting up the driver to be victimized or murdered.

Safety is an absolute must to PROTECT the the truck driver to the best one's ability.

God bless every American and their families! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

I am thinking you need to understand an important point - our rights are not granted by our government and the way the system works is that they never been granted, we have to have a broad overview of the limitations of the government and what they can or can't do. unlike Canada and England where our system of laws came from, they grant rights to the individual because they were and in many ways still a subject of a sovereign. I know some in Canada and England will say other wise but I say to them dig into the agreements with the sovereign to see who actually is in power and what they can do if they want.

They fact that is missed is we have been regulated since the 1930's, our logging requirements, our uniformed vehicle laws and all kinds of other things come from the railroad which needed regulations in the latter part of the 19th century because of the abuse going on there. Our time came in the mid-40's after the war because we had to ignore some of the regulations for the war effort and then in the late 40's the states all agreed to using the feds regulations for their own. Remember that the feds don't enforce the laws or regulations on a truck or driver basis, it is all the states that do.

But the fact is that we are a regulated industry, we are subject to more stuff than the public in what and how we do it and no one has the "right" to drive in it as so much as no one has the right to fly a plane. Because of our numbers, opposed to pilots, we have to deal with broad regulations that make it look like we are being abused and in a couple cases more restrictive than pilots (their Physical isn't something that the examiner can make up the rules) but it is because we are; first not acting like professionals as do pilots and second because it is impossible to have industry specific regulations for the different work we all do, we have no choice but to put up with the BS and the backwards regulations that are imposed on us.

IF you want to change these things, then it is simple;

1 - start treating this as a profession and hold others accountable within the industry. Don't make lame excuses for drinking or drug use and stop acting as if this is a right to drive.

2 - get politically involved, that means voting and learning how to write your representatives. OOIDA is a good start but they can't do it alone, they need people to speak up who vote.

3 - pick one or two issues, not a bunch of them and find people who want to address those issues. For me it is the CARB issue and how the state of California has told other states that in order for any truck from other states who want to reach the markets in California, they have to have special equipment which is not mandated in other states. This guts the interstate commerce clause on a few levels and in fact can then be used to restrict the feds in other areas but we need the courts and other states to be involved.

4 - this one will sound bizarre but it worked for one driver, he joined the ACLU. He got pulled over in Ohio, inspected and they wanted to inspect his sleeper with no reason given. He told them he has to call the ACLU first to see what right they have and showed the officers his ACLU membership card. They backed down.