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Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

>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?

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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.

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