safe driving

Throughout 2020, as truck drivers’ responsibilities have become more vital (and focused upon) than ever, the need for major road and driver safety improvements has never been more important. This also comes at a time where trucking regulations have seen many changes–and pushback.

As the firm’s own Ken Levinson and Jay Stefani have seen first-hand the effects of current safety issues on America’s roadways, they decided to weigh in on what potential changes are needed for truckers right now–and what decisions they think are doing more harm than good.

“It seems like any time there’s a need for more deliveries and more drivers, especially during things like COVID, the trucking industry and trucking companies use that need as an opportunity to skirt safety,” explained Levinson. “Whether it’s hours of service or requirements of drivers and commercial drivers’ licenses–even letting younger drivers drive 80,000 pounds. We’re all for efficiency getting supplies, food, and necessary resources to people–but not at the expense of highway safety.”

This year, regulations regarding driver service hours have been made more flexible, as have age and training requirements for new drivers entering the industry.

“It seems like at every turn, whenever there’s an opportunity, the trucking industry does everything it can to maximize profits at the expense of public safety, and there’s just too much risking involved in the skirting of rules and regulations that are there to protect the public,” Levinson said.

These kinds of safety regulation relaxations have led to many more cases of crashes, injuries, and even deaths on the road, causing many safety advocacy groups to oppose these rule changes.

“Frankly, we see the devastating effects of a lack of driver training, lack of driver attentiveness, and lack of adherence to safety rules. We see it all the time, and it just leaves families devastated.”

Even before the coronavirus pandemic’s stay-at-home orders caused many Americans to have food and household items delivered more frequently, as well as many hospitals and clinics ordering more resources and personal protective equipment, there was already a major shortage of truck drivers across the country on top of issues surrounding driver retention rates–a shortage that tempted the industry to loosen CDL requirements and regulations.

“To me, one of the biggest issues out there is that the industry is talking a lot about how it needs more drivers, and that’s one of the reasons they’re pushing to lower the driving age for CDL holders,” said Stefani. “I think the issue is more about paying drivers a fairer wage. For a lot of the drivers, at first blush, it looks like they’re getting paid a decent amount. But more often than not, gas is coming out of their pockets–these trucks burn through a lot of gas–and drivers are paying for the lease on the truck.”

Often, experienced truckers get tired of this mistreatment, so they end up leaving the industry altogether–and now, trucking companies have become desperate to fill those spots.

“The industry is looking to add more drivers by turning toward younger, less-experienced, cheaper drivers,” Stefani explained. “They’re trying to add 18, 19, 20-year-olds. Not only are they younger, they’re less experienced driving cars, let alone driving these massive tractor-trailers that are sometimes hauling hazardous materials. It’s unfortunate that, oftentimes, the industry’s first turn is to cut safety tools and to cut regulations that are there to protect everyone on the roadway.”

The truckers Levinson and Stefani work with in their cases typically bring up the importance of driver experience–the number of miles and the number of years behind the wheel–which often plays a big role in trucking-involved accidents.

“Lack of driving experience is a major factor that often comes into play in what we see in our cases all the time,” said Stefani. “Oftentimes, these are less-experienced drivers, or they’re drivers that are being pushed beyond the limits of their hours of service. They’re driving tired–they’re exhausted. And a lot of that is because they’re getting pressured to stay on the road.”

This driver fatigue is a more prevalent problem than many people realize. In 2006, 13% of all truck crashes were associated with exhausted drivers. Relaxing hours-of-service regulations is clearly only going to worsen that issue, Stefani says.

“There’s a significant percentage of these crashes that we see out there that are caused by drivers that are tired, and that’s with the already-existing hours-of-service regulations,” Stefani explained. “Letting truck drivers drive when they’re even more tired is not the solution. Add more drivers. Spread out deliveries. There are some places that will do what’s called ‘tandem drivers’ or ‘co-drivers,’ so that there are split shifts within a truck. There are a lot of options out there other than forcing drivers to drive when they’re tired.”

Supporters of hours-of-service regulation flexibility argue that many drivers don’t want to be made to rest when they would rather be working–but Stefani said this is not what will come of this change.

“There’s no question that this isn’t going to be a situation where they let drivers drive more hours if they want to,” he said. “It’s absolutely going to be a situation where the truck companies and the shippers are telling them, ‘No, you’re now legally allowed to drive 12, 13, 14 hours a day, so we expect you to do that.’”

Following a reported truck driver shortage of 60,000 drivers at the end of 2018 and a two-year delay of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s entry-level driver training rule, the industry is hoping better training and mentoring will help younger truckers to fill the gap as older truck drivers continue to retire.

“We have challenges coming our way in the next decade, such as a greater problem with current drivers retiring,” said FMCSA Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee member and senior vice president of safety, security, and driver personnel at J.B. Hunt Transport, Greer Woodruff. The Safety Advisory Committee recently commissioned the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to analyze correlations between age and safety among truckers. According to said study, there is “no safety-based reason not to use younger drivers when structured training, mentoring, and coaching systems are in place.”

The data, which was pretended to MCSAC in mid-July, included information from more than 9,000 truckers between the ages of 21 and 64, and found that a greater driver safety impact is found with driving experience as opposed to age. MCSAC is a panel of 18 people that aims to provide recommendations to FMCSA’s administrator on motor carrier safety programs and motor carrier safety regulations.

“What we found was experience seemed to be a bigger factor on driving risk,” said Susan Soccolich of VTTI, who conducted research for the study. “If there is a notion that 21-to-24-year-olds might be a high-risk group, we don’t feel that our study found that relationship.”

The research committee was asked to look into the older demographics of the professional driver workforce within trucking and bus industries, and to find whether or not this trend will “exacerbate the driver shortage problem.”

Last year, American Trucking Associations reported that 60,000 truckers were needed by the end of 2018, making for the largest driver shortage ever for the country.

“Over the past 15 years, we’ve watched the shortage rise and fall with economic trends, but it ballooned last year to the highest level we’ve seen to date,” said Chief Economist for ATA, Bob Costello, at the time.

The report said the trucking industry would work to hire at least 1.1 million new truckers by 2029, with an average of 110,000 per year.

To help with onboarding difficulties, the FMCSA delayed a long-awaited Entry Level Driver Training rule until February 2022. This rule was meant to ensure new truckers would meet minimum training requirements before being allowed their commercial driver licenses.

“This action will provide FMCSA additional time to complete development of the Training Provider Registry,” said the agency in late January. “The TPR will allow training providers to self-certify that they meet the training requirements and will provide the electronic interface that will receive and store entry-level driver training certification information from training providers and transmit that information to the state driver licensing agencies.”

FMCSA stakeholders have continually expressed their concern regarding the shortage, and have discussed options to allow younger drivers to enter the trucking workforce. With many commercial motor vehicle driver retirements coming up quickly, carriers are looking for younger, long-term truck drivers to become their replacements.

ATA’s study explored safety performance of differently-aged drivers with similar experience levels, and also compared drivers with different levels of experience within the same age groups.

Additionally, the study assessed safety performance through Motor Carrier Management Information System crash involvement and moving violation involvement, along with carrier-recorded crash involvement.

Some of the major issues explored by MCSAC were how aging workers could affect a carrier’s ability to efficiently deliver goods safely, the impact of older drivers on supply chains, what the workforce looks like for the future, how the impacts of aging workforces can be mitigated, and the role FMCSA plays in these efforts of change.

Although VTTI’s research showed younger drivers could match older drivers’ safety performances, many panel members disagreed.

Gary Catapano, committee member and employee of the National School Transportation Association, said that those believing VTTI’s research could be easily persuaded to trust it for guidance. “The research should be used with a high degree of caution,” he warned.

Committee member and vice president of Clark Freight Lines Inc., Danny Schnautz, agreed. “We see a correlation between maturity and experience being the safer driver,” he said. “Typically, maturity comes with age.”