A major concern for truckers is driver fatigue. Truck driver fatigue is one of the major causes of truck accidents on roadways in the United States and results in dozens of fatalities and hundreds of accidents each year.
Truck drivers involved in accidents reporting suffering from drowsy driving nearly one of every five accidents. As a result, the U.S. government is taking steps to combat driver fatigue and have stepped up guidelines and rules regarding rest times, off time and consecutive drive hours.
Technology will now play a key role in helping to combat drowsy driving and enforce truck driver rules. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is looking to put an electronic monitoring system into a few trucks to digitally record the amount of time the truck is running, track the amount of miles traveled, and monitor the truck's location.
These new electronic recording devices will be much more difficult to tamper with, and may help ease the pressure that exists between truckers and their employers to deliver loads long distances in short amounts of time.
In fact, the FMCSA is so confident in their devices that they estimate the adoption of this technology into every truck across the United States will prevent 562 accidents and 26 fatalities every years.
These devices are likely soon to be approved and regulations put into place to have these installed on all big rigs. Though the new regulations and requirements may take a few years to be put into full practice, officials believe it will replace the “errors” that can occur with tampered time and mileage logs as well as cut down on the number of truck drivers operating their vehicles on unsafe amounts of rest and sleep.
Ultimately, these devices will make the roadways safer for truckers, their companies, and the millions of Americans who share our highways with these big rigs.
