I can’t see any way this could happen without clear intent to break the laws. It’s also strange that it’s being done in a way that is plainly obvious to the trucker.
JimBob, the driver in the story, is about to hit the end of his Hours of Service where he'd have to park the truck and go take a federally mandated break.
JimBob calls the e-logging vendor, who logs him out of his e-log system, creates a fake driver profile, attaches it to the truck, and assigns all his driving over to the fake ghost driver.
To the DOT, all they can see at this point is that Someone Else was driving the truck this last week. Someone Else doesn't have to be in the truck at all, when JimBob gets stopped for a truck inspection, he can merely say "Oh, Someone Else was dropped off at the Loves five miles back and I took over this truck from him" as a bullshit lie as to why he has a fresh log on the road.
The ELD vendor and JimBob in this story are both quite flagrantly guilty of abusing the e-log.
My understanding is that in many regions, driving when exhausted is treated as being just about the same as driving drunk. So they're basically cheating their exhaustion breathalyzer. I imagine a lot of financial pressure is placed on them through the usual methods: giving unreasonable quotas or paying them by the job/mile so they're indirectly incentivized to cut corners.
While driving at night, high speed on an unlit country road, I didn't even realize I was drifting and managed to clip the grass and nearly lose control of the vehicle. Thank the heavens I was able to recover and avoid a crash, but it was also a massive wake-up call. Like, "oh, crap, I really can't focus right now. When did that happen?" I slowed down, found the next rest area and napped before continuing. Since then, I take breaks much more seriously on long trips and try to avoid driving for long periods after dark. I don't understand where these long haul truckers find their stamina.
I've spent quite a lot of time driving on I5 in the western US which has a very high volume of truck traffic. I can pretty confidently say that a lot of these truck drivers do not have the stamina you think they have. Many of them are driving just as fatigued and unfocused as you describe yourself being. I make it a point to avoid going over either the south California mountain passes, or the north California ones, after dark, for that very reason.
Meanwhile some CDL bus driver or day cab driver clocks out at the end of his shift, commutes an hour home, has dinner, gets woken up for 10min at 3am by his infant and then clocks back into work at 4am and the government is fine with it.
Same number of waking hours. Same number of driving hours. But the white collar bureaucrats give the latter a pass.
Back in the day they just cooked the books but now with ELD they can't anymore.
A zero-to-sixty (kilometer) on par with a Miata, no loudly revving diesel engine or exhaust, and approximately 40 tonnes between coach and passenger weight should not be so quickly dismissed.
Safety is pretty damn low on bus priorities. Even with our damn children, school buses are often driven by underpaid, overworked, inexperienced people, and the kids have nothing to protect them in an accident. City buses don't have belts or safety either, but at least they are usually in very low speed collisions.
We had to implement an annoying rule about stopping before train tracks so they'd stop trying to cross in front of trains!
We ignore it because fixing it would cost tax dollars
This is not so straightforward when drivers are paid by the kilometer. In such cases government could mandate minimum waiting pay rate is average equivalent hourly pay rate of driving hours from same shift, or such like.
[0]https://www.harpercollins.com/products/arriving-today-christ...
Back in the day I’d drive a few hours, stop and take a nap and/or mess around for a while then go back to driving until I was ready to shut it down. Never, ever, had to drive in rush hour because I’d just wait it out.
Nowadays you basically have to drive 8-10 hours straight because once your clock starts you have 14 hours. It is possible to split it up but not like the old days and, like all things gov’t, it’s super complicated.
They also claimed when they changed the law they’d make sure we had plenty of parking so everyone could run legal but, of course, that never happened so drivers have to make their own parking spots which is why you see them parking wherever the hell they want — which encompasses two of my many pet peeves.
You HAVE to have very very clear limits like this. Truckers are an adversary in the process. They would try driving 24/7 if they physically could keep their eyes open. They ALWAYS think they are one of the safe ones while pushing their mental health.
You needed an 8 (or 10, we’ll assume 10) hour break for every 10 hours driving so you could drive 5 hours, take a 4 hour break, drive 5 hours, take a 6 hour break, drive 5 hours, &etc… until you reached your destination or ran out of your 70 hours. You can still do splits but they are 3 hours maximum or 7 hours minimum…need a degree in mathematics to fully understand the hours of service rules and don’t ask the logs department because they will just put you on the “watch list” instead of telling you why the computer thinks you’re in violation. No, not bitter.
In practice nobody could do splits like that for very long because you’d get stuck at a shipper or receiver (or both) and end up getting in a full break.
Now you basically have to drive your whole day at once which is very tiring. Driving 8 - 9 hours straight sucks. I almost always drive at night but sometimes have to drive during the day when I’m usually sleeping which also sucks, is more dangerous and, ironically, is the reason they changed the rules so tired drivers weren’t, umm… driving.
If you know the signs of being tired and can stop and take a break there’s no real problem but the current system forces you to drive tired because once that 14 hour clock starts you pretty much have to deal with it. It can be paused once, during the first half of a split, but usually isn’t very practical to do that.
Today’s a perfect example, I got into town this morning but don’t load until tonight so am taking a (probably, would have to look) 8 hour break before driving to the shipper to get (at least, these people don’t get in any sort of hurry) another 2 hour break before driving all night. I’d have rather driven down here just in time to get loaded but then I’d wouldn’t make the delivery on time because of the way the hours would work out so now I get to drive all night on 5 hours of real sleep. Perfectly safe.
And it seems in the USA that is... just an app?
If a truck driver gets pulled over, they need to prove to the officer that they are operating within their hours. In the past, this was done with a physical log book.