Researching Driver Drowsiness Technology for Trucking Industry

If you need something or somebody to tell you you're tired you may not be smart enough to drive a car much less a truck

 

83,000 my ###.

 

This is truly a conundrum.

I saw the OP replying to me and then read yours.

I'll combine the two.

You can have all the tech or things in the world tell me, Mr Sleepyhead that I am way too tired to continue. However it is not the matter of stopping to get some sleep but rather if you stopped at all against the then new concept of appointment times back in the late 90's you were fired.

The Industry bent over backwards to work around the limitations of HOS. (Hours of Service) which is already twice what most of society works a 40 hour week. A week is 168 hours. You can easily burn about 120 of that if not more dealing with the truck during your "Awake time"

Once you awake from a normal overnight sleep, you have about 16 hours of your daytime to run around, work, play, chase your spouse or other etc and enjoy life. At some point you have to consider going to bed at night.

That is normal for most people who do not drive a 18 wheeler. At night, you are just getting loaded and rolling and now have to be somewhere 600 miles or more away by morning to deliver and unload.

If you are lucky you will have spent your 10 hours asleep in the bunk while the day time workers loaded your trailer. You would be up bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to put in 14 hours of your work, on duty and driving.

You just did not stop because if you did and were late you were fired. If you did not stop and wrecked because driving sleepy is worst than driving drunk, you got fired. Then sent to prison if you killed a family while exceeding your logs.

Some people only need 6 hours a sleep to put in a full day. Others like teenagers require about 9 to 11 hours every night. None of this is factored in our Regulations for HOS.

There is however... increasing technology between when I ran GWB (Geo. Washington Bridge) every night with a 80's era manual iron tractor trailer with no computer assistance as in today's modern automatic trucks. The fatigue imposed by shifting and doing your driving is much less in a automatic truck. You can literally cross the GWB and not get tired in the rush hour shifting.

Truckers don't stop. Two truckers in a team just cross the USA twice a week 6 days or so. 7000 miles and do it again next week. Ive done it. For months and was not tired. We literally chose to stop one night a week to get OUT of that tractor, have a date night (Husband wife team) and get a nice Super 8 hotel that is quiet and does not bounce around on the road all day and night. (Never mind the other bouncing...) now and then.

I still say in my old age, (Past 50...) that driving sleepy is worst than driving drunk and condemn it. However I lived the idea for many years if not several decades of my life with the concept that you do not sleep tonight. You waited until next week after you delivered into Chicago tonight from the gulf coast after waiting all day to load.

All the technology in the world will not stop a dispatcher from growling at the timid newbie who is just 21 and does not know the meaning of sleep to be in Chicago overnight from 1000 plus miles away. He'll be there. Because he does not understand yet how to say no and keep his job.

That is why we have the computers imposed by the Government called ELD's. And we scream about losses of our rights and freedoms etc etc etc. Go figure.

 

Don't flatter yourself. It's not the truck driver's life the government and other safety groups are concerned with. It's the lives of those around the truck drivers they're trying to protect. They don't care a wit about the lives of blue collar truck drivers

 

Where do police officers drive around for 12 hours or more? I've never heard of any departments that run anything other than a standard 8 hour shift, unless there's a crisis situation where overtime is authorized.

 

The best way to fight drowsiness in trucking? Dont operate outside of your circadian rythm. Get what ever sleep you are used to and stick with it. Dont let the company push you. As long as the loads are getting there on time or early you are golden. Sleep deprivation isnt a issue except maybe for new drivers whom arent yet used to the lifestyle of driving. Yet a driver can master that in 3 weeks time. 21 days to create a habit.

No need for alarms.

 

You get the small sheriff's departments and I'm talking 4 deputies and the sheriff small, they're on twelve hour shifts

 

Maryland State Police uses to be on a 8 hour shift with good precision. You can almost tell when it's shift change, they all go away.