Crossing the country several times a year, sometimes by plane or train but usually by car, I see a lot of highway. When possible, I stay off interstates, preferring the scenic two-lane state and U.S. highways. When it becomes necessary to use an interstate, purportedly for speed, I am taking my life in my hands.
I grew up on a four-lane highway, U.S. 20. It was in the days before the interstates or the state turnpikes (except for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, built on an old railroad right-of-way). Each new turnpike or interstate was designed to take traffic off the old highway system and provide a smooth, multi-lane freeway (although many were toll roads) for trucks and autos. Although I try to avoid them, I am out there often enough to see lots of truck wrecks.
Not a monthly issue of Firehouse Magazine (a technical publication for the fire and emergency service) goes by without at least one item on a major trucking accident. Most reports are of some fiery calamity with multiple fatalities or hazardous material spill that calls for multiple alarms and sends casualty claim adjusters racing to the scene. Atlanta has eight interstates radiating out of it, along with a circular perimeter interstate, and hardly a day passes without a major truck wreck on at least one of those roads.
In 2002, at least 4,897 Americans were killed in tractor-trailer-related vehicular accidents, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported. That is more than the Sept. 11, 2001, toll and the number of American military personnel killed in Iraq added together. It is about 10 percent of the total number of annual vehicular fatalities. The government's own figures are 1.65 fatalities for every 100 million miles.
In 1995, Congress mandated a new truck driver hour-of-service law. It created the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 2003. It was the first opportunity to change truck-driving rules since 1962, when such regulation fell under the now defunct Interstate Commerce Commission. A new rule instituted last year by the commission "cites scientific studies indicating that a truck driver's ability to do his or her job deteriorates 'geometrically' after nine hours behind the wheel. But it [the new rule] increases the time trucking companies could require drivers to be on the road from 10 hours to 11 hour per day," Jeff Nesmith, of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, reported on Sept. 19, 2004. "The rule says sleep experts believe that human beings do not experience fully restful sleep outside 24-hour 'circadian rhythm' cycles. But it would allow companies to schedule drivers according to a 21-hour cycle of sleep and work. The regulation also would increase the total amount of time a trucker could legally drive in a week." The whole thing sounds confusing — and it is!
However, reported Nesmith, a three-judge panel for a federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C., threw out this regulation in the summer of 2004. By September, the U.S. Department of Transportation was back in court, asking the same three judges to reverse their ruling and allow truck drivers to spend more time behind the wheel out there on those interstates.
The Time of Loss
Those of us who learned adjusting the old fashioned way, when written statements were taken in person from individuals involved in or witnessing accidents (what some of us called the John Jones detailed statement*), were taught that every detail was important. That was especially true of time factors. Statements were to be like time-and-motion studies: every tiny bit of information was important, including the timing. The exact time of the accident was a crucial factor, along with what led up to it.
Why? Because of risk engineering. For example, what do the disasters of Bhopal, India, Chernobel (Cherbigov) in the Ukraine, and Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania all have in common with the Exxon Valdez oil spill? They all happened in the middle of the night. Crews were less attentive to crucial details than they might have been in the daytime. I recall reading a study done by a major railroad that kept track of the time of day of accidents or employee injuries in their maintenance facilities. When the times of the accidents were charted, there was a peak around 10:30 a.m. Was there a common denominator?
The railroad conducted interviews with the involved employees. Each and every one of them had skipped or missed breakfast that day. The railroad elected to open its cafeteria each morning and offered all its employees a free breakfast. The accident rate declined significantly, saving the railroad far more than it spent on those breakfasts. It does not take much common sense to realize that, when people do not get regular sleep, rest, and food, odd things can happen. Skip breakfast, or your morning coffee, and by noon you will be wandering around in a daze.
"Driver fatigue is a common problem, as hours-of-service regulations are routinely violated," stated the Georgia law firm Head Thomas Webb & Willis. "Careful examination of records after an accident often shows serious and even fraudulent violations of those safety regulations. However, trucking companies are required to maintain many of those records only for six months."
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) complained to the court that trucking companies, shippers, and even state officials had begun enforcing their new hour rules, and the court's decision just screws it all up. Trucking companies — and probably truck drivers, who get paid for driving, not sleeping — support the FMCSA's appeal. The American Truckers Association warned of chaos if the court's order were obeyed, Nesmith reported. They complain that trucking firms would lose millions of dollars if they had to revert to the prior rules that mandated a 24-hour work cycle with at least 10 hours reserved for sleep or rest. Opposition to the appeal has been made by a number of highway safety organizations, according to Nesmith, including Public Citizen, Parents Against Tired Truckers, and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways. The Parents organization estimates that enforcing the 10-hour sleep rule would save many lives lost in trucking accidents. The insurance industry, however, has not taken a position or, at least, has not made it known if it has one.
Sauce for the Goose
My Irish mother had a saying for everything. One of her favorites was "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." There is a rule for railroaders, carefully enforced by the government and the railroads, that mandates that a railroad crew cannot work more than 12 hours in a 24-hour day. If a crew aboard a locomotive (there being no cabooses any more) does not reach its destination, a rail yard or crew changing location, within 12 hours, the train has to stop. There it sits, out in the middle of nowhere, awaiting a car with a fresh replacement crew. If it is blocking the mainline, too bad. The crew's time has expired, and the train must stop. It is a safety thing. The fact that perhaps an extra half an hour would get it to its destination is beside the point. The engineer and the crew must be ready for any emergency, controlling the speed, monitoring the signals, sounding the whistle. Twelve hours. Time is up. Stop the train right now.
The 10 or 11 hours mandated for truck drivers may seem to be less but, by using a 21-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle, the Department of Transportation wants to let truck drivers drive their 11 hours out of 21, technically resulting in a 14-hour day, exactly where they were before Congress demanded a new law in 1995. If truckers were required to follow the same 12-hour rule as railroad engineers, many more tractor-trailers probably would be parked up and down the interstates.
Trucking is a vital part of American commerce. Railroads cannot haul everything to everyone. Perhaps back in the 1930s, when there was rail service everywhere and deliveries were made by a UPS-like outfit called Railway Express, fewer interstate trucking companies existed and most trips could be made within eight to 10 hours. Now, that is no longer true. Even though firms such as UPS and other truck lines do use the railroads for long distance shipping, at least some of the railroads are at full capacity. Ergo, the trucks hit the interstates for long, long journeys. If you work 11 hours in a 24-hour day (as probably many catastrophe adjusters have following the hurricanes this year), you have worked 45.8 percent of the day. If your day-cycle is only 21 hours, however, those 11 hours represent 52.4 percent of the day.
The next time you are out on an interstate tooling along at the speed limit and look up in your rearview mirror to find the nose of a monster truck five feet from your rear bumper and gaining, you might wonder whether that driver is at the beginning or the end of his 21-hour day.
*John Jones is the sample statement used in the 1972 National Underwriter Co. text, An Introduction to Liability Claim Adjusting, 2nd Ed., by Corydon T. Johns, now out of print.
Ken Brownlee, CPCU, is a former adjuster and risk manager, based in Atlanta. He now authors and edits claim adjusting textbooks.
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