Trucking Technology

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I have written several times this year about proposals for toll lanes for trucks on metro Atlanta interstate highways.  An article this week shows another reason why this may become a necessity.

The Georgia Department of Transportation expects to spend $160 billion on road construction projects between 2005 and 2035. But revenues from the motor fuel tax that funds road improvement are projected to bring in only $86 billion during the same period. That leaves a $74 billion funding gap.  In addition, federal funding for highway construction has declined sharply in real terms because the federal motor fuel tax is set at 18.4 cents per gallon and is not indexed to inflation, Studstill told the more than 300-hundred attendees at the event. “This shortfall could result in a complete drawdown of the Federal Highway Trust Fund in 2009,” Studstill said. If this occurred, federal highway funds would be exhausted in three years. That leaves a $74 billion funding gap for Georgia roads.

At the same time, increasing road construction costs, population growth and more truck traffic through the state and from the booming port of Savannah increasing pressure on Georgia’s roads.

Three fiscal solutions have been proposed.  One is project-specific Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST, on a statewide or regional basis. Another is a statewide 1% sales tax  to replace the fuel tax.  The official estimate is that this would generate $1.5 billion per year, compared with $850 million from the fuel tax.

The third approach would involve public-private partnerships such as toll roads. Georgia law allows GDOT to partner with private or corporate businesses to help finance, design, construct, operate and/or maintain transportation projects. Four are under now consideration in Georgia.

There is also the possibility of rail or other transit relieving commuter pressure on metro Atlanta expressways, while we add another 2 million or more people in the next 25 years. Transit makes good sense in densely populated areas, and the area inside I-285 is rapidly becoming a much more densely packed urban environment.

As with moth things, there are no easy answers.  The tough choices are seldom if ever between good and bad, but between good and good, and between bad and bad.  My hunch is that the federal, state and local government officials will incrementally cobble together some imperfect combination of all these approaches, but we will stay perpetually behind the growth curve until something — either good (e.g., fantastic new energy technology, etc. spurring stronger economic growth)  or bad (environmental, demographic and/or economic collapse)  — causes a dramatic discontinuity in our current patterns.

TheFederal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is providing to motor carriers a guide to available onboard safety and security products.  The guide has been published on the FMCSA  website (www.fmcsa.dot.gov). Safety systems highlighted are collision warning systems with adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning systems, rear object detection systems, tire pressure monitoring systems and vehicle stability systems.

The American Transportation Research Institute, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations, released the results Sept. 12 of its industry analysis of using the recorders to monitor driver hours. The ATRI research does contradict perceptions that the devices would hurt driver morale and retention. A surprising 76 percent of users said the recorders had improved driver morale, and 19 percent said they had improved driver retention. No users said driver retention had been harmed by the devices. The report did not explain why the improvements in morale and driver retention occur.

There was considerable consensus among users, non-users and vendors that recorders are effective at managing and monitoring hours compliance, but more research is needed to document the role that hours compliance plays in fatigue management and safety improvements, ATRI reported.  “As a compliance tool, it appears that EOBRs can meet FMCSA’s need for improved HOS monitoring," said Al Koenig, president of Midwest Specialized Transportation. "But we still need to address certain safety loopholes, such as improved confirmation of who is driving and whether EOBRs will increase speeding to offset potential productivity losses.”

The libertarian Reason Foundation think tank is promoting, among other things, privately funded toll roads and toll lanes for trucking:

Buoyed by the advent of real-time inventories and Internet commerce, truck traffic grew by over 45 percent in the last decade and is projected to grow another 39 percent in the next 10 years. Trucks need their own lanes. There are over 5,000 deaths a year in car-truck collisions. And most trucking companies would gladly pay tolls to drive in truck-only lanes that allowed them to carry more goods — by using larger rigs than are currently allowed in most of the country — and kept them separated from cars. Los Angeles, home to both the nation’s worst traffic and busiest shipping ports, has plans for truck-only lanes to reduce congestion and keep goods, and the economy, moving.

See Reason.org for articles about free enterprise approaches to a variety of infrastructure and education issues.

Reuters reports today that global positioning system, or GPS, technology is enabling larger trucking companies to grow and take market share from small companies.  Such technology enables trucking companies to know where all their trucks and trailers are at any moment, providing shippers with complete supply chain visibility.  The article predicts this trend will continue as retailers simplify their supply chains by opting for a few, big carriers instead of hundreds of smaller carriers. Clicking on a blue dot on a computer screen map, a trucking company manager can bring up a screen showing the exact location of a truck, its load, starting point, destination, cash advances, miles covered by the driver and comments from supervisors and customers. Companies using state of the art technology use handheld computers carried by every single driver to manage and plan freight flows across the United States. Trucking companies that utilize such technology will continue to take market share and increase revenue by focusing on software and tools that smaller companies often cannot afford.

The technology that enables trucking companies to boost profits can also contribute greatly to the cause of safety, as it enables companies with safety-conscious management to closely monitor driver performance, speed, and rest periods.

Washington, DC, 2/9/06. The National Transportation Safety Board adopted a final report of a runaway truck accident in Pennsylvania that has shown the consequences of improper maintenance on automatic slack adjusters for air brake systems. The board issued 11 safety recommendations aimed at improving training for drivers and mechanics that work with air brakes.
These recommendations arose from a 2003 incident in Pennsylvania in which a dump truck going downhill was unable to stop, resulting in the death of both the truck driver and a child in a car as well as injuries to several pedestrians. The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was the lack of oversight by the truck’s owner, which resulted in an untrained driver improperly operating an overloaded, air brake-equipped vehicle with inadequately maintained brakes. Contributing to the accident was the misdiagnosis of the truck’s underlying brake problems by mechanics involved with the truck’s maintenance, a lack of readily available and accurate information about automatic slack adjusters, and inadequate warnings about safety problems caused by manually adjusting them.
“We believe that more than 500,000 vehicles equipped with air brakes may be operated by drivers who, like the Glen Rock driver, have no air brake training and therefore may not be able to operate their vehicles safely,” said NTSB acting chairman Mark V. Rosenker. “This situation needs to change, and change quickly.”
The 21-year-old driver had been working for the trucking company for less than two weeks and had never driven an air brake-equipped. He has received no training on how to drive an air brake-equipped vehicle, which operate differently from hydraulic brakes on passenger cars. In addition, the rear brakes on the accident truck were out of adjustment.
Mechanics who worked on this truck and the driver who worked on a truck involved in a similar accident that occurred in California in 2003 did not look for underlying problems with the slack adjusters or other brake components. Therefore, they misdiagnosed the brake problems, probably because they were not properly educated on the function and care of automatic slack adjusters and how they relate to foundation brake systems. “The warnings in existing materials available to owners, drivers, mechanics and inspectors of air-braked vehicles equipped with automatic slack adjusters have not been successful in communicating the inherent dangers of manually adjusting automatic slack adjusters to correct out-of-adjustment brakes,” the board stated.

Washington, 12/2/05.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s regulations governing minimum standards for entry-level truck driver training are inadequate based on the record developed during the rulemaking process, a federal appeals court ruled today.
The minimum requirements adopted last May by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration involve only classroom education and in only four areas: medical qualification and drug and alcohol testing; hours-of-service regulations; wellness; and whistleblower protection.
The court said: “The (FMCSR staff’s) Adequacy Report determined that effective training for CMV drivers required practical, on-the-road instruction on how to operate a heavy vehicle. But FMCSA ignored this evidence and opted for a program that focuses on areas unrelated to the practical demands of operating a commercial motor vehicle.”
The appeals court agreed with Advocates that the sharp contrast between FMCSA’s earlier conclusions and the terms of the final rule shows the agency’s actions to be “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. “The agency, without coherent explanation, has promulgated a rule that is so at odds with the record assembled by DOT that the action cannot stand. Accordingly, we grant the petitions for review and remand the final rule to the agency for further rulemaking consistent with this opinion.”
It does seem incredible that the FMCSA would adopt truck driver minimum training standards that do not include having to actually drive a truck on the highway. But, hey, new lawyers have been admitted to practice law for generations without ever actually trying a case or counseling a client.

Chattanooga-based U.S. Express has announced that it is now equipping its trucks with “smart cruise.” According to an article in The Chattanoogan, this technology automatically keeps other drivers at a safe distance because it is able to detect vehicles in front of the truck. When a truck driver comes too close to a car, it is supposed to alert the driver to slow down and automatically decelerate the engine when necessary. According U.S. Express, this system acts as a “behavioral device” by changing “drivers’ habits.”
Hopefully, the alarm is loud enough and early enough to alert a tired driver who is drifting into “microsleep,” decelerate the truck and prevent impact.
If it works as described, this technology would have prevented two of the truck wreck cases we are working on now, in which tired trucks southbound on I-75 in the middle of the night, en route from the Midwest to Florida, ran right over smaller vehicles. In one of those crashes a 16-year-old boy was killed. It might also have saved the life of my daughter’s friend who was killed when a tractor trailer plowed into the rear of her family’s vehicle on I-20 in Alabama.