What Counts Most

Avatar photo

The folks who’ve managed to convince everyone that to be safe you must be compliant have really made a mess of things. The link between compliance and safety is obvious in many cases, but tenuous at best in others.

Consider hours-of-service rules, particularly the American version. They were written into law in 1936, and they’ve been revised only twice since then. They were also written, for all intents and purposes, by the labor unions. Science hadn’t begun to look at sleep cycles back then, or what “circadian rhythms” meant. Yet, as long as we’re in compliance with those longstanding rules, we’re presumed to be safe.

Doing as you’re told under these circumstances can kill you. If you run over-the-road under the U.S. rules, driving for 10 hours and then sleeping for eight, you’ll be going to bed six hours earlier each day than the day before. This pattern destroys your natural sleep rhythms. After four days out, you’ll have completely reversed your awake and asleep times.
Sleep scientists will tell you that advancing your bedtime is probably the worst thing you can do. Yet, that’s exactly what American HOS rules force on drivers.

And now we’ve got a real problem in trying to change to regulations that reflect modern understanding. There’s a bunch of misguided citizens’ groups and bureaucrats who seem to believe the existing law must be the best alternative, simply because it’s already a law. A woefully misinformed Canadian senator named Mira Spivak suggested Canada adopt the existing U.S. version, saying it would benefit the driver. They seem to think modern science must be flawed because it’s at odds with the present law-yet it’s one that’s never been examined in a scientific light.

I’ll go a step further here and bet a week’s pay that not one of the clowns proposing to keep or revert to the current U.S. regulations (10 driving, five on, which you’ll never use in a highway situation, and eight off) has ever spent a week or three living according to a logbook. But when we try to explain it to them, they call us criminals because drivers aren’t willing to comply with their dangerous regulations.

Brake adjustment is another example of the safety versus compliance issue. You could argue all day that exceeding your stroke limit by as much as one-quarter of an inch doesn’t mean your truck is unsafe. The experts worry about reserve braking power and emergency stops, so they use an appropriate stroke length for the particular chamber size as a line in the sand. Fine. That’s not what concerns me.

As an industry, we’re so concerned about meeting stroke adjustment rules that we all but ignore some real brake-related safety concerns.

Don’t believe me? Ask Andy Van Esch of Valley BrakeRite in Chilliwack, B.C., or Dale Holman of Truck Watch Services in Georgetown, Ont. They’re brake experts who’ve seen first hand what can go wrong with brake systems. These two are having a difficult time selling their approach to monitoring and measuring brake performance because the fleet maintenance people are driven by their management to minimize brake-stroke violations. Go buy your stroke indicators, but they won’t tell you if there’s stopping power at the end of the pushrod. Stroke is a convenient indication of how the fleet is maintaining the vehicle, but what matters most is the amount of force applied to the wheel.

So while we’re killing ourselves trying to comply with an arbitrary regulation, there’s a young driver out there somewhere who can’t understand why his truck pulls to the left when he touches the brakes. One day, he’ll need to really stomp on the brake pedal and his truck will take off across three lanes of oncoming traffic. It won’t be because his brakes were out of adjustment, but that none of the brakes on the right side of his truck worked properly, likely due to bad plumbing.

Safety is big business in trucking. It’s big business for government auditors and inspectors. And it’s the industry’s perceived biggest weakness, largely because we haven’t done a good job explaining the truth.

The fact is, we’re kept too busy trying to comply with rules-hours of work and brakes are just a start-to talk about the realities of safe trucking. Personally, I prefer safe over compliant. And I’d welcome any opportunity to explain the difference to someone who doesn’t already understand this concept.

Avatar photo

Jim Park was a CDL driver and owner-operator from 1978 until 1998, when he began his second career as a trucking journalist. During that career transition, he hosted an overnight radio show on a Hamilton, Ontario radio station and later went on to anchor the trucking news in SiriusXM's Road Dog Trucking channel. Jim is a regular contributor to Today's Trucking and Trucknews.com, and produces Focus On and On the Spot test drive videos.


Have your say


This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.

*