Mixed opinions on Obama's transportation safety picks

[jmowreader]

The National Transportation Safety Board is in charge of investigating transportation mishaps, largely airplane and bus crashes but they will get involved in unusual incidents with other kinds of transport. The President has selected Deborah Hersman, a current member of the Board, to be its new chair. I don't think he could have made a better pick: she's on the board already, has investigated many incidents, and holds a CDL so she can understand truck and bus crashes from the viewpoint of the driver. If she knew how to fly she'd be absolutely perfect, but maybe that's a little too much to ask.

Not so sure on Anne Ferro, his choice to head the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. FMCSA is in charge of truck safety, and as president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association Ferro at least understands what she's getting into. This isn't a "Heckuva Job Brownie" choice--Ferro understands trucking, and I think she'll do a good job. Her problem is that she supports the current, screwed-up, hours of service regulations. No one likes the 14 Hour rule--once your workday starts, you may not drive after 14 hours has elapsed. Drivers, dispatchers, trucking company executives, the Teamsters, drivers' wives…this rule is alone responsible for probably 90 percent of the falsified logs out there.

I'll give you an example of how this rule can totally fuck you. On Wednesday, I got two load assignments: the first was to go to a paper products warehouse at midnight, pick up a load of movie theatre cups, and drive it to a food distributor. The second was to leave the food distributor, go to a shopping cart factory, and pick up a load of cart corrals. I drove for an hour to the paper products warehouse. It took three hours for them to load the paper cups. It took half an hour to drive to the food distributor, where it took six hours--two waiting to be unloaded, four being unloaded--to drop off the paper cups. Another half hour on the road to the shopping cart factory, and it took them until 1:30pm to load me. (Or, more accurately, it took that long for US to load me--at 1pm I was up in the trailer helping to push merchandise into it.) By the time I had a bill of lading in hand, it was 1:45 and I had fifteen minutes to find an abandoned warehouse to park in front of until midnight. I made $31.20 that day. That will pay about half the light bill. Horrific days like that don't happen often but they happen more often than they would if we were allowed to start and stop the 14-hour workday--say, if you have to sit for more than three hours you can pick up your 14 from where you last worked.

If she'd fix her opinion of the 14-Hour Rule she'd be fantastic, but as she is I think she'll do fine.