Defining ‘gobbledygook’ with driver Sandy Long

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Missouri-based Weston Transportation driver Sandy Long, blogging here, this morning laid down a primer for owner-operators and drivers on the term gobbledygook, defined by Wester’s as “wordy and generally unintelligible jargon.”

She found some examples of it in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s postponed proposal (from last year) to mandate electronic onboard recorders for nearly all interstate truckers. The agency more or less admits that its harping on “fatigue” is something of a self-reinforcing factor in estimating the number of actual fatigue-related crashes.

They do that, however, with self-contradictory gobbledygook, says Long. “You cannot regulate the human body outside of a hospital with any sort of machine or electronic device,” she writes. “That is what we are talking about when we talk about fatigue, how each individual’s body reacts to certain conditions beyond lack of sleep.” You can check out her full post here.

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