'Mr Truck and Bus Safety' talks to CM
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Photographs by Dick Ross
: Dr Kaye, there are many 'allels between the transport ration in the USA and Europe. a thing in particular which is y topical over here at the ment is the question of drivers' irs. In the States, like us, you re a 10-hour driving day and a hour week for commercial iers, and you have been talking int the need to change this. Do feel that there is sufficient ience in the States to justify, , an eight-hour day, and do feel that the Human Factors ;earch report of 1972, which had a hand in, provides a is for such a move ?
Kaye : We have what we call 0-hour rule. This was formuK1 as the result of a study by Public Health Service in 1940. .e we are in 1975, 35 years still operating on •the 10it. rule ; the environment has nged, the trucks have changed, ny things have changed but the remains the same.
■ ome 44 per cent of all the idents we investigate are gle-vehicle accidents — the ek and the bridge, or the tree
or something, and 85 per cent of those we feel are preventable. There must be some element that contributes to that phenomenon. Is it fatigue? We don't know, so our Bureau got the very first study started in 1970; we spent $363,391 on that one landmark study which was called the Truck and Bus Driver Performance Study — which title became corrupted into "The Fatigue Study." Some people thought that we felt that the 10-hour rule was a wrong rule and that we were spending a third of a million dollars to prove that there should be a different rule. That wasn't the idea at all. We wanted to find out about the element of fatigue and where it sets in; but the problem we had there was that we dealt with seven regular-route carriers and one bus company.• Now, they go from A to B routinely, but we nevertheless got a lot of very vital information, five or six different categories of information, which indicated when the element of fatigue enters and when a driver recovers best and so on. That was a first step. We are not realty looking for changing the hours of service if it is proven that we don't need to, but we are expanding our research now in a phase two study. We are going into irregular route carriers and charter bus operations which have no fixed schedule as such, and their element of work is not regular. We have to gather real evidence before we can make any change in a rule of this magnitude. Many drivers exceed the legal limits—as you probably know—particularly now that we have a nationwide speed limit of 55mph, and a 10-hour rule means 500 miles is virtually the maximum you can do in a day.
BC: Have the enforcement authorities tended to turn a blind eye because of that?
Dr Kaye: Not exactly. It is coming more and more into focus: we are putting more emphasis on the States themselves enforcing the rules, and if they don't enforce them they stand a chance of losing all federal funds. We are getting very sticky about this now.
BC: It seemed to us that by achieving fuel economy through a 55mpti limit you were suffering a diseconomy in the ton-miles of goods that could be moved by a vehicle each day.
Dr Kaye: Well partially, but Congress nas passed a law which allows an increase from 73,2801b to 80,000lb on the vehicles, so now seven trucks can carry what eight might have carried.
BC: Were existing trucks allowed to be uprated? This wasn't simply for new models?
Dr Kaye: This was for existing vehicles. Some States had the grandfather clause which allowed them to use 80,000 lb, but not on the interstate highway. This was a paradox--on the secondary state roads they could use 80,0001h, but on the interstate the law precluded it. Now that's changed. Getting back to our landmark study, which has gotten a lot of publicity. Now there is another agency, the National Highway Traffic Administration— which deals with the standards for new trucks, buses and automobiles. They were performing a study which was called the Heat, Noise, Humidity and Vibration Study for Passenger Drivers, to see how these factors affected safety, and we added $200,000 to their contract and said broaden it to include buses and trucks. So this is separate from the length of driving time and all the other elements. We are trying in every possible way to get at this problem by using all the external forces which we have available.
BC: And this heat, humidity and noise •study included both ambient conditions and in-cab conditions?
Dr Kaye: Right. The real world. And it reported that, short term, there was no real deleterious effect on the driver. Except on female drivers—you know, we have lady drivers in thousands. Some in husband and wife teams, some just lady truck drivers; they have a national society and all that sort of thing. But this study suggested that, in the long term, there were definite effects.
Another thing we have put into effect as of April 1 this year is what we call the internal noise limitations. We have set up a 90dB(A) limitation for the internal cab noise for trucks, because noise impairs safety and hearing. On October 1 of last year it applied on new vehicles, but retrofitted on others from April 1 of this year—so all vehicles have to meet that requirement. That's our rule. Now the Environmental Protection Agency have what they call an external noise rule that will come out on October 15 of this year, and we are the enforcement agency for that rule. They have different dB(A) figures for each passby. Measured from 50ft distant, commercial vehicles must not exceed 86dB(A) at under 35mph, or 90dB(A) at higher speeds, or 88d8(A) on a stationary run-up test.
On this business of fatigue, we conducted the first study, but that was of limited scope; since then we have gotten into the noise, heat and vibration study, and now we are just getting under way with what we call our second contract. This calls for the research contractor to undertake a whole range of laboratoryvalidated and on-road "real world" tests of drivers employed by non-regular carriers and charter bus companies, to attempt to establish relationships between work patterns and work/rest cycles and driving performance. In particular, we're interested in jobs where much of the driver's time is spent on non-driving work such as moving cargo.
BC: While the original Human Factors Research report confirmed that increased hours meant increased fatigue, and that this appeared to create lack of co-ordination and some deterior ation in driving performance, to my mind it didn't establish that this led to more accidents. The accident figures given were very marginal and you could argue them either way. Presumably this new study shows that you still feel the need to establish a causal link between accidents and fatigue?
Dr Kaye: One of the most revealing things that happened during our first study was when I would go to a big trucking company and ask them, in your experience in this company, at what point does a driver have the most catastrophic accident? Can you tell me if there is a pattern; if you send him out on the road, at what point is he likely to have an accident? The answer I got was that it would occur within the first two hours of driving. Now, why? I have had many, many suggestions on this. One is that a guy is fatigued to begin with, he has been moonlighting, painting his house or driving his car or something, and by the time he comes to work he is probably exhausted. Or maybe the guy is just over-confident. Another factor is that at the beginning of the day he is in the heavy traffic, perhaps with tricky light. All these things may come into the picture and we are looking at this type of thing more to find out how these things contribute to the final breakdown. And we are not satisfied yet.
But you know there are some people—in fact the Nader-sponsored PROD group—who have sued me because they say that we should know that eight hours is what the driving rule should be. Well, this went to court, and at the same time we were having the independent truckers' strike in America, when all the independent truckers stopped work, and they came to us and said take the 10-hour ceiling off—we want to drive for 24 if we have to The more you drive the more you earn and the less you drive the less you earn. So at about the same time we had these pressures in both directions. The judge ruled on the eight-hour case, to the effect that by January of next year we have to initiate rule-making. Now that means we have to issue an advance notice, then we digest that information; then we may change it entirely. Then we put out a notice of proposed rule-making. It could take two years to go through the whole process, and in the meantime our research studies are going on.
BC: What sort of evidence did they have to offer in order to take you to court and say that eight hours was needed?
Dr Kaye: Mainly drivers' complaints. This PROD group is an organisation of a few hundred drivers that are unhappy or distressed or have problems and so on, and they now have a little group that can be heard.
BC: What is the Teamsters' reaction to this? They are not pressing you for eight hours?
Dr Kaye: No. Only the PROD group. I know that many places in Europe have eight hours, but can you imagine eight hours in the States with a 55mph speed limit?
BC: You are saying that you are not going to be rushed into making a change without being convinced that there is a safety pay-off. In this country we are in a situation where the Common Market regulations are due to
come into force next January, re ducing driving hours from 10 t eight with no real pretence—oi at least, evidence—that this is safety move. It is even called "social regulation." Over her the emphasis is on reducing hour for social reasons, howeve broadly one interprets "social, whereas in the States you ar seeking safety evidence. Do yo have no "social" reasoning Ix hind this question?
Dr Kaye: Our charter as a Burea is that we administer a nationz programme for buses and truck on safety, and beyond that w cannot go. For example, th Nader people asked for a hearin about smoking on buses becaus bus drivers did not like passenger smoking. Well, we held a hearin and we couldn't find any safetj related problems so we said it not our baby—forget it. So the had to go to another agency to g( a ruling on that. Now the eigh hour rule, unless there's a safet factor, we cannot rule on that.
BC: So it could be that if you pi out a proposal for an eight-hot rule and it became law, and the somebody challenged you to pro‘ that it was a safety measure an you couldn't, you would ha.‘ stepped beyond the bounds your charter ?
Dr Kaye: Theoretically yes, thoug it is very unlikely. A " rule" is law. It is a law of the land. Whe I sign that docket, that is it. Bi before we do this we have to on pretty sure ground that it for the benefit of safety — just don't jump in.
BC: You said a rule propos went out to the public for con ment. Do interested parties, 111 the American Trucking Associ tion, have a bigger say than ti general public ?
Dr Kaye: The public has to I heard, and has opportunity fi comment at several stages advance of rule-making. Even we put a rule in and the publ
ioesn't like it, there is still a .ecourse. They can petition us Tor 3. recourse, so then the rule goes )ack into an appellant chamber;
n the meantime the rule goes nto effect but we could later lave to rescind it. What we try
o do, on an occasion say when he American Truck Association s speaking for the industry, is to ake into account that they are .epresenting 20,000 carriers or Lbout two or three million drivers. 3ut the decision has to be a ogical one that doesn't cornn.omise safety but contributes to afety. Economics doesn't control t. but we realise that for every 100 that may be required
o fit a safety attachment or levice to a truck, that has a parter of a billion dollar impact ,n the industry. So we have to aok at that; it may be only 100, but just think of the impact n the industry.
IC: Your Bureau is part of the 'ederal Highway Administration. )c) you have any in-state uthorisation or are you solely a ..deral agency ? Do your rules nd regulations apply on all Dads, not just interstate highrays?
fr Kaye: We have agreements 4th all 50 States, where we xchange information and work )gether. They can inspect intertate and instrastate ; we can't Lspect intrastate except if a ehicle belongs to an Interstate arrier who has at least one Lovement involving hazardous Laterials, then we have jurisiction, In fact 37 of the States ave already adopted our rules theirs and 38 have adopted our azardous materials rules, so we re working toward uniformity.
C: You have over' 100 officials iforcing your federal rules ; do Le States have their own highay enforcement officers ?
r Kaye: Some just have a .cade, others have a real enforceent service. Florida have prob)1y 75 or 80 inspectors on their staff alone. California, Arkansas and Arizona are other good states, and there are more. We have 123 safety investigations for the Bureau, nine hazardous materials officers, nine accident investigators, and nine regional directors. We have about 130 professionals in the field at the present time. We are giving the greatest emphasis now to hazardous materials. All our 130 officers are concentrating on hazardous materials alone, this is a special push we are doing. They will also do safety surveys and bus inspections and road checks, but the road check will concentrate on the hazardous materials. And the States will work with us end so augment our staff.
You see we have no police nowers. We can inspect the vehicles but we have to get the State highway patrol to pull them in. But when they come in to weighing inspection stations, when they come to ports of entry and all that type of thing—once a vehicle has pulled in to a safe haven with no hazard to life or property, we will inspect it.
We inspect vehicles on a very highly selective basis. We look for those which are most likely to be candidates for our service. Our men have a sixth sense—or seventh sense ; they can look at a vehicle that is brand spanking new and still pull it off to the side. How they detect them is just incredible. Anyway, 22.4 per cent of all the vehicles they inspect are declared out of service. And that doesn't mean that the posture of the industry is that bad, it is just on the selectivity basis that we have. We did a study, because the industry said "Hey, you guys are blackballing us on this thing." And so we spent $60,000 on a study to do it scientifically. The statisticians mapped the United States, ports of entry, times of day, and so on, and established a statistical sample to be pulled in. The result was about 18 to 19 per cent of all the vehicles that were inspected were declared out of service.
BC: Those would be what we call immediate prohibitions. Do you have second or third-line sanctions—we have delayed prohibitions which enable a vehicle to proceed but the fault has to be cleared within a set period.
Dr Kaye: Yes, our period is 15 days. There is hardly a vehicle which goes through that isn't written up for something and then the driver has to sign the MC63 form and the fault has to be repaired and signed for by the mechanic, and if we don't get the clearance back within 15 days we follow it up again.
BC: Is there some particular reason for your hazardous-loads campaign ? Have you had a recent bad history of incidents ?
Dr Kaye: Not in the motor truck industry but we have in air freight, and any shipment that is related to air is usually involved in road transportation at some point.
I think the road carrier record is good, but the danger potential is great, and you are sitting on something that could be catastrophic, so why wait for it to happen and then go back ? In an accident a few weeks ago in Texas, a butane or propane tank exnloded killing 18 people and injuring 35 others ; the tank propelled itself into a mobile home area, and it was a Mexican operation down there. We are investigating that accident. The driver was trying to avoid an automobile or something and he over-evaded and it didn't work out. BC: Your research into safety belts resulted, I believe, in belts becoming obligatory in trucks. Is that true of all trucks ?
Dr Kaye: Every truck in interstate and foreign commerce and every bus must have seat belts installed, as of 1965 vintage and later, and they must be used by drivers. A co-driver doesn't have to wear his, but the driver does. That is the law in the United States—the use of seat belts is mandatory, but not on cars, BC: Are they in fact worn pretty generally by truck drivers now ?
Dr Kaye: Yes and no. How can you monitor the situation ? It's a moral obligation. Some guys carry them in their lunchbox but when they get to an inspection station they have them on! Many drivers won't wear them, but others won't be caught without them, BC: Are they just lap belts? And have they reduced fatalities or injuries among truck drivers ?
Dr Kaye: They're lap belts. We have gotten many, many reports back from truck drivers who tell other drivers they're alive today because of this rule, but we haven't tabulated it as yet. The chances of survival, according to our data, are so much greater by the use of a seat belt.
BC: There have been fears over here that a driver could be pinned by a shifting load coming through the cab if he was wearing a belt. Have you had this at all ?
Dr Kaye: We haven't. We have had all kinds of reactions to the use of seat belts, but I think it is an educational process. When they see the results and a driver tells another driver, this is the greatest thing we have had—and drivers write to us and say: "listen, I'm alive because of that rule." It's a salesman situation. Sure, it's a law, it's a moral obligation. You can't run the book on all of them. It'll grow.
BC: You have a personal reputation for believing in what you call "voluntary compliance," and I know you have been attacked by some of the environmental and other groups for relying on this rather than taking a tougher line on enforcement. Don't you think that when the responsible operator complies voluntarily, this opens the door wide to the irresponsible ones to benefit ?
Dr Kaye: Brian, we just have to convince them that safety is a profitable business as well as a moral obligation. Our Bureau covers around 150,000 carriers operating three million trucks and employing about five million fulltime or part-time drivers. We have an enforcement staff of around 130 people. Can you tell me any other way to do it ?