The headline in the Winnipeg Free Press on Oct. 15 screamed, “Driver fatigue blamed in crash.” The story insinuated that a truck driver who had been hit by a train at a level crossing near Firdale, Man. in May 2002 “may have been fatigued.” The driver was not charged with an HOS violation. By all accounts he was in compliance at the time, yet Rob Johnson, the lead investigator for the Transportation Safety Board, said “fatigue contributed to the collision even though the driver told investigators ‘he felt fit and rested at the time of the accident.’ ”

Johnson had concluded that the driver had slept only nine out of the previous 45 hours, and had had a 30-minute nap in the previous 19 hours, having worked for 16 of them.

I can’t manage the math that puts this driver in compliance, but without a charge being laid, one has to assume he was. I draw your attention, again, to the headline. “Driver fatigue blamed in crash.”
Here’s another one. This one came across the wire on Sept. 29. “Driver fatigue not accident cause says Wilson Logistics.”

Company management was responding to a spectacular wreck that closed the 401 — the busiest highway in North America–at Yonge St. for most of that day.
“Whatever may be found to be the cause of the accident following a thorough investigation, the company is quite certain that driver fatigue was not a factor,” the company stated. “At the time of the accident, the driver of the [Wilson] vehicle was in full compliance, and well within, all regulations covering hours of service for highway transport truck drivers.”

The mainstream media were in a frenzy over that one. Because the accident happened in the wee hours of the morning, tired truckers were all the rage for the rest of the day. The wreck even awakened Ontario’s transport minister, the Honourable Harinder Takhar, long enough to declare all-out war on unsafe truckers.

Within hours, one company was standing firm that fatigue couldn’t have been an issue because their driver was well within the confines of compliance. It took two years in the other case to reveal that the driver was compliant. Still, fatigue was touted as a cause by no less than Transport Canada’s lead investigator. I’d be willing to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt over the trial-by-media as witnessed in Toronto following the wreck on the 401.

The Firdale incident occurred at four o’clock in the afternoon, so visibility wasn’t an issue. One has to wonder how something as big and loud as a locomotive could be missed when it was obviously pretty damned close to the driver–on a prairie field that’s flat as pee on a plate.

I’d be willing to accept that fatigue–or fatigue-induced inattentiveness–had something to do with that accident. Counting back 45 hours from the last time the investigation Johnson claims the driver had slept would put him at the very end of two very long days of work. By my estimates, he’d been driving or on duty for 19 hours that shift–with a few off-duty intervals in there to get him out to 19 hours; before which he must have slept for nine hours after having worked (a combination of driving, on-duty, and off-duty breaks) for 17 hours two days prior to the crash.

Now fast forward to Nov. 8, 2004, and recall a Globe and Mail headline that screamed, “18-hour day for truckers ‘insane’.” Sure, it was a Teamster-driven rant about the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) deal of 2001 having been broken, but go beyond that. CTA wants drivers to have 18 hours available to do 14 hours of work. An average of 18 hours a day is what that poor bugger in Firdale had worked and CTA is proposing a similar driving, off-duty, on-duty rotation as this guy had apparently worked.

Even if I had used my downtime properly I’d hate to be a driver with 18 hours on my logbook–compliant or otherwise. It’s too much of a personal liability. I wouldn’t want my name dragged through the mud the way I’ve just speculated about the Firdale driver. And I’d hate to have some accident victim’s family members in court listening to my defence of a work routine that’s just plain excessive. Flexibility be damned. Bill the shippers for delays they cause and let them explain to their customers why the load was late. Any flexibility yet to be wrung out of this system will ultimately come off the drivers’ hide, not the shippers’, the dispatchers’, or the CTA’s.