'Black box' proposal divides truckers

— -- A proposal to require that commercial truckers install electronic on-board recorders — a cruder version of the "black boxes" found on commercial jets — is pitting the nation's two major trucking organizations against each other.

The proposal, which is included in a long-term, transportation spending bill being debated in Congress, would mandate the recorders as a way to ensure that truckers do not exceed federal hours-of-service rules.

Many commercial truckers, who are allowed to work for 70 hours in eight days before taking 34 hours off, currently keep track of their hours worked in paper log books.

The 150,000-member Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association, based in Grain Valley, Mo., opposes the measure, arguing that the devices will invade drivers' privacy, won't increase accuracy of record-keeping and will heap an unnecessary expense on thousands of small-business owners who drive trucks.

"The big fleets … contend that a recorder is more reliable," says Todd Spencer, OOIDA's executive vice president. "But it's not. All it can tell is whether a vehicle is moving or not. It can't tell whether or not that driver is on duty or off duty. … The reason the big (trucking firms) want real-time tracking of trucks is that for them it's a productivity device. They want to make sure trucks and drivers are moving every single minute … regardless of whether a driver is too tired or too fatigued."

The American Trucking Associations (ATA), the nation's largest trade association for the trucking industry, supports mandating the recorders. "We all can make mistakes," says Sean McNally, spokesman for Arlington, Va.-based ATA, which represents 37,000 motor carrier and other members that employ hundreds of thousands.

"There are people who are driving illegally because of these paper logs," McNally says. "Our fleet members who are using (recorders) tell us it cuts down on hours-of-service violations, makes it less burdensome to do paperwork, that they have fewer violations and comply with (federal) rules more effectively."

The recorders on trucks would not be used in crash investigations because they simply collect data on when trucks are moving and when drivers are working, McNally says.

Dan Osterberg, senior vice president of safety and security at Schneider National, a Green Bay, Wis.-based international transportation and logistics company, says the firm saw a "significant" reduction in crashes after it required on-board recorders for its 13,000-truck fleet in 2010.

"We actually did an internal study several years ago of a four-year period of crashes involving our trucks," he says. "We found that fatigue was the No. 1 cause of crashes at that time. Since we started in 2010, we've seen a significant reduction in fatigue-related crashes, in fatality crashes and in injury crashes."

On Monday, auto club AAA and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, a non-profit group composed of local, state and federal trucking safety officials and industry representatives, joined ATA in urging Congress to support the electronic onboard recorder mandate.

Tilden Curl, 53, of Olympia, Wash., who drives about 110,000 miles a year, opposes the recorders. "I think they're not going to do what they're purported to do," he says. "They're not going to make us safer."

Curl says he worries that companies that hire drivers will be able to manipulate the recorders to force drivers to work longer hours and to "micromanage" drivers. "I see absolutely no benefit to it," he says.