Companies currently using driver cameras...

I don't know if you drive a truck or not, but if you do, do you have a camera in your face?

 

Slow down cowboy. The password is posted at the entrance for all to use. It's probably to discourage web search bots.

 

I do drive a truck, have for three years after 20 years of driving charter coach buses. And yes, for several of those years I have driven with driver-facing cameras. Twice I’ve even gotten a chance to watch footage from accidents when other drivers hit my bus, it’s wild, pretty entertaining, and made it clear in both cases that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, driving awake, alert, and undistracted.

My experience also shows me that aside from actual accidents, no one watches the camera! As I’ve mentioned before, I put a sock over the camera in my previous truck for two months just to see if anyone would notice, and never heard a peep. More recently, after a recent service the camera in my truck came back dead, no power to it. It’s been that way since September and again, no one from my company has said anything about it.

My company has around 500 trucks on the road. Our safety office has four people working full time, keeping busy with the normal amount of safety issues. Do the freaking math! Let’s say that each driver generates 40 hours a week of video (it’s probably more). That’s 20,000 hours a week for 500 drivers!

I don’t care who you are, unless you’re so bad that Safety has a serious reason to take a close look at you, you’re just not important or interesting enough for your company to pay anyone to watch 40 hours of you picking your nose or playing with yourself. Not only is it literally impossible to watch 20,000 hours of video every week, but even if they only watched the video from only one driver out of 500, that’s still 40 hours of utter boredom for the watcher! Think about it! How long could you sit in front of a video screen and watch a guy drive a truck???

No one is watching you.

 

A camera on the driver can only harm you. In the event of an incident that goes to court, a ruthless attorney can use anything against you.

Whereas camera outward facing are there to tell the story of what’s happening on the road.

I have no issue with outward cameras. But I won’t drive one freaking minute with one on me.

 

I’d think that companies would be better served by installing side cameras in addition to forward, rather than spending in inward. If I became an OO, I’d have that coverage for sure. But doubt that’s happening. I doubt I’ll be driving a truck at all much longer.

 

This bears repeating:

Your paranoia is based on your inability to imagine what is happening on the other side of the camera. Try this: put up your own driver facing camera and record one day of driving. Now watch just one hour of it. I’ll bet you won’t last fifteen minutes. How many hours of mindless boring video do you generate? How many drivers does your company have? How many hours do they generate? How many people would your company have to hire to watch even 5% of all that video? How much would it cost in payroll?

How much money is your company willing to spend on hiring enough people to sit in front of video monitors to watch thousands of hours of video? Get real, no one is actually watching you.

 

Gladly,

I'm not going to mention company names, cause I'm already in enough ####. But right now I am in the office environment regularly of 2 medium sized companies (2-400 trucks) and 1 mega carrier (1000-3000 trucks) up here. Company A has outward facing Camera's no audio, Company B has In and Outfacing Camera's with Audio, Mega Company has In and Out facing, audio, eye tracking, speed gauge and lane departure.

Company A has given operations managers real time camera access. Safety can pull footage going back 6 months by request, the camera's self check every 15 minutes for "obstructions" and will send safety an alert is 3 self checks fail in a row.

Company B has 4 full time camera watchers, they have 3 screens going, that rotate between trucks every 5 minutes, unless something happens to trigger an alert/event. They can also focus on a single truck for 30 mins at a time, in out and audio. Safety can pull footage going back 1 year, Fleet Managers have real time access. As far as I know, the camera watchers do not phone the drivers for "Coaching sessions" they just fill their files with violations.

Mega company has between 8-12 Camera watchers, same setup as company B, but they will call drivers for everything to provide "coaching" *see harassment* I'm not sure who has Camera access outside of Safety and Watchers, but I would assume Management. Since the camera's have eye tracking, they pickup any blockage instantly, and will alert the watchers. If any of the camera's stop functioning, they will literally setup a switch, in the middle of a load to have the tractor back at a terminal ASAP to get it going again.

How do they fund this? simple, the safety bonus's they no longer pay, insurance reductions, deductions to the O/O's etc etc.

It literally reminds me of THX1138, and yes they have video/audio of "sleeper activities".

Glad I quit when I did, cause its here for all O/O's now also, and you get the bill.

 

Another legality to keep an ear out for is audio recording. Some states restrict it or do not allow it, as far as I know. I have always wondered how companies get away with recording ANYthing without a signed consent form, and also with the varriance in state laws for recordings of different types. Just my half cent thought.