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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder if people take into full consideration this gig-economy reskin of commercial driving or not. I maintain a CDL for work I perform at a large truck service center and its involved. Do "amazon drivers" or "uber drivers" even have a commercial drivers license or insurance?

- do they receive regular CDL related physicals that are required by DOT?

- do they receive an automatic drug screen after an accident?

- do they perform the pre-flight check on their vehicles before getting underway?

- are their vehicle logbooks and inspections current? can they produce them if pulled over?

- do they maintain acccurate weight, and accurate logs of vehicle maintenance?

being a commercial driver is much, much more than just clicking "yes" on amazon and hoping for the best.

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I have a CDL (Class A). My understanding is that the requirements for a CDL are mostly around mitigating the risks created by large or hazardous vehicles.

It wasn’t clear for me that the referenced Amazon program would be having drivers operate large vehicles.

Indeed, the USPS doesn’t require its drivers to maintain a CDL and there are large commercial uses of vehicles in the States that do not require a CDL.

And you cost more because you are subject to these rules and regulations. Amazon will abuse the lack of rules and enforcement on this, just as everyone else that can will do so until we write and codify a law that prevents or discourages it. Sadly, this is how these things tend to work.

I think the government should change the regulation (less regulation) to make it easier for people to be commercial driver.

A cdl allows one to drive either 50 tons of truck or a bus full of people.

Do tell me, the current negatives of the regulation regime, and the benefits of the new one? Also don’t forget to provide a realistic analysis of future safety failures and ways in which the old regulations would have prevented that, and why the new ones don’t and why that’s ok.

current negatives ? Increased cost of doing business

Will there slight increase in safety failures ? maybe, I accept that.

A fatal accident can cost a trucking company over 1mil USD. The ATA (American Trucking Association) lobbies heavily to allow under 21-year-olds to carry freight over state lines. There’s no talk about in the upper echelons of US trucking to relax medical, drug, safety, or experience requirements; these companies know it will put them out of business if they hire drivers who get into accidents or even get people killed. There is currently a HUGE lack of qualified, safe trucker drivers in the US. Your suggestion would drive up the cost of freight in the US, and would cost lives.

Further, companies like Amazon will have enough money and influence to absorb the cost of unsafe drivers, while most registered US motor carriers (the vast majority of which are under 100 trucks) will be put at a huge disadvantage vis a vi Amazon. The last thing society needs is Amazon yet again pushing others out of business by being able to race to the bottom and lose money in the short to medium term.

>A fatal accident can cost a trucking company over 1mil USD

That's the deterrent for the trucker to not screwing up.

Are you for real? At best involuntary manslaughter will get you usually at least 12 months in US prison, not to mention any financial penalties from the criminal or civil lawsuit.

Do you have any first hand experience with trucking? It really sounds like you are expressing your opinion from a place of ignorance (feel free to prove me wrong with reasoned argument). My background: I am a founder of a US based software company whose customers are motor carriers.

I find hackernews oddly unsatisfying recently because of comment threads like this. Someone pops in and offers a knee jerk “no regulation” suggestion. Then either people agree with them (yikes!) or there is this type of exchange. Where an expert (and I have a ton of truck drivers in both sides of my family, so while I am not an “expert” by vocation, I am very familiar with issues) points out real life problems and the other person doubles down on crazy.

This means I have to have my “idiot filter” on whenever I’m reading hn.

I'm not suggestion no regulation, rather less regulation. I'm not claiming I'm and expert. Can you maybe please argue the point, rather than resorting to insult.

>Will there slight increase in safety failures ? maybe, I accept that.

So you want to deregulate commercial truck drivers because you feel costs of getting/maintaining a CDl outweigh the safety issues?

Do you have any insight on this at all? Have you ever driven a commercial truck for a living? Do you even know the cost of obtain/maintain a CDL? The average cost of a commercial trucking accident? The average decrease in commercial truck accidents via-a-vis trucking school?

How about commercial pilots? Should we do away with pilot license because the liensure increases business costs notwithstanding increase in safety failures?

Do you think with less regulation suddenly trucker will be more careless ? The burden that the trucker will pay if they involve in an accident still going to be high, if its not already high and assuming they too do not like to die.

Truckers will absolutely become more careless, because when their money (and their employer’s money) depends on how many miles you can push in a set time period, there will be the ultimate incentive to be careless and push the limits.

And here are the incentive for the the trucker to not being careless :

- death

- disabled for life

- life in prison

- monetary damages

- no company will hire you

>Do you think with less regulation suddenly trucker will be more careless ?

I believe with less training and lower standards there will be more accidents?

Historically there were less regulations and more accidents. Licensing is only one component of the safety regulations enacted, but again historically yes without these regulations truckers engaged in more risky driving behaviors.

Again it sounds like you are unfamiliar with the industry.

I'm not suggesting less training or lowering standard, I'm suggesting less regulation.

Company can still provide as many training or requiring as high standard as they want.

One way to reduce risky driving behaviors is to impose high penalty/punishment for risky behaviors.

>I'm not suggesting less training or lowering standard, I'm suggesting less regulation.

Except you want to remove those regulations that include training and licensure requirements.

Rules already exist to penalize CDl holders for poor driving and they are a higher standard/increased penalties compared to none CDl drivers...what we don’t need is allowing untrained and unlicensed commercial drivers, that in no way will improve driver safety.

>Except you want to remove those regulations that include training and licensure requirements.

yes but the company can still train their trucker as much as they want, the trucker can still get training as much as they want.

>what we don’t need is allowing untrained and unlicensed commercial drivers

These untrained trucker won't get hired, do you think you will want to hire untrained trucker ? Regarding the unlicensed, why not ? provided they can prove that they can do the job well and has good track record ?

Regulation sets a floor for the race-to-the-bottom. Companies could set high standards, yet they usually meet the bare minimum. Improving standards costs money. Unless it's a requirement, it gets cut.

Regulation create barrier to entry, not about safety. If safety you want, impose high penalty/punishment for reckless behavior.

Everyone believes they're going to be the lucky ones. Simply imposing high costs doesn't deter reckless behavior. People still drive drunk, jaywalk, drive on bald tires, smoke...all activities known to be dangerous.

Regulation creates a barrier, sure - a good barrier is one which requires training, practices, and equipment to promote safety.

imposing high costs doesn't completely remove reckless behavior but it reduce reckless behavior.

Likewise, with high regulation, there still people who drive recklessly.

Regulation creates a barrier, so its not easy for newcomer to enter and compete.

Becoming a good trucker still requires training, practices, and equipment to promote safety regardless of regulation.

>Increased cost of doing business

Are you sure about that? What would the insurance risk premiums be on letting amateurs drive tractor trailers.

Seems this would simply push the risks (future expense of an accident) on other people of the road.

I don’t have any hard numbers or studies. I am inferring this from the fact that the ATA and trucking lobby hasn’t made a hard push to relax FMCSA safety regulations. Large motor carriers were the first to adopt ELD. They know what regulations to fight and which ones to accept, in terms of what will help their bottom line (and maximize value to their shareholders as many motor carriers are public companies).

I’d rather the government make it more difficult for big companies like Amazon to exploit their workers, as opposed to making it easier for workers to be exploited.

Forcing a full-time driver into a contract role is pure exploitation, given that it absolves Amazon of a certain level of civic responsibility (now the contracting driver isn’t paying himself enough... and Amazon sees a nice reduction on the payroll).

So you want the government to actually care about its citizen well being ? Then do something like basic income instead.

Basic income does not address the fact that many of these regulations are required for the safety of the driver as well as other drivers on the road. Removing those to make the job cheaper to perform and thus more profitable doesn’t make it better for society, regardless of who reaps the profits.

I'm addressing your comment of worker being exploited (not being paid enough).

This was my first comment, but the heart of the exploitation here is that the regulatory burden being placed on the worker IS the exploitation, because the related cost is hidden. Removing the regulatory burden is not the right solution to the exploitation.

If your concern is safety then one of solution is to impose high penalty/punishment for reckless driving.

Amazingly, people often fail to respond to negative incentives, because they think they will be lucky enough to avoid them. See: - heart attacks - lung disease - saving for retirement - vehicle emissions - etc.

And, even if you can’t afford the punishment for killing another human being, you might still be able to afford to take the risk to do so. It’s a sort of lessor version of a free-rider problem.

Even there, this is assuming that people that take on this level of personal liability are even aware that they are taking that risk.

negative incentives works otherwise we wouldn't have it. Does it work perfectly ? no. The goal is to reduce. To eliminate completely maybe impossible.

Preventative medicine is the most effective treatment.

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