Drag Illustrated Issue 125, September 2017 | Page 38

Dirt Federal Electronic Logging Device mandate will negatively impact drag racers By Forrest Lucas Editor’s Note: Before founding Lucas Oil Prod- ucts, Forrest Lucas was a truck driver, becoming the first person in the United States to get a full 48-state license with the authority to haul in all the lower 48 states after the deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980. He moved his business to California and developed better lubricants for his trucks and as they say, the rest is history. He remains heavily invested in the wellbeing of the industry, and he is very concerned about what the mandatory electronic logging devices will do to the sport of drag racing and our country’s economy. I am writing this article because I think the requirement of an Electronic Logging Device (ELD) for almost all CLD drivers is wrong. Sure, the big trucking firms with thousands of trucks on the road want to move to computerized record keeping. Let 38 | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com them. But what may work for the big guys is a looming disaster for the middle- and small- sized firms. For example, an ELD for race teams does not make any practical sense at all. Yet, if the drivers haul their cars more than 150 miles from their home more than eight days a month, they have to get an ELD. Truck logs were never intended to be a safety measure and will be even less so with ELDs. The original purpose of the driver logs was to protect drivers from being forced to work when their mental and physical well-being called for a break. ELDs will not reduce highway crashes due to distracted driving, impaired driv- ing, or car drivers who do not know how to drive around other vehicles. Drivers will have to adopt unsafe practices such as driving when they really need a break when the mandate is fully in effect. The numbers are clear that less than one percent of the highway deaths are caused currently by large truck driver fatigue. But beating the ELD clock will force drivers to drive whether they feel like driving or need a break. The irony is that the safety argument for ELDs is really not true. More accurately, the ELDs should be seen as an anti-safety device. The government says, “Electronic logging de- vice (ELD) means a device or technology that automatically records a driver’s driving time and facilitates the accurate recording of the driver’s hours of service, and that meets the requirements of subpart B of this part. ELD record means a record of duty status, recorded on an ELD, that reflects the data elements that an ELD must capture.” That information can be kept on a piece of paper a whole lot cheaper than buying a piece of fancy technology and paying monthly charges so some computer can prepare and send reports for a government agency that cannot manage its own technology. That agency has been told by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) that its technology is lousy. Fleet Owner describes the July 2017 GAO report on Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) information technology systems, its ability to effectively use budgetary funds, and to meet users’ needs as “scathing.” Besides questioning the point of putting an ELD on a truck when paper works, I don’t think Issue 125 OP-ED: #DelayELD