Reader Rick Blatter of Laval, Quebec, offered the following response to this linked New Jersey newspaper editorial to Overdrive after it was ignored by the newspaper’s editors. Weigh in yourself in the comments or write a letter to the editor of Overdrive via this link.
I too am angry and saddened that yet another person has died on the highways of New Jersey.
Neither tightening nor relaxing regulation will solve the problem of non-compliance.
And part of the problem may be totally illogical over-regulation. Some rules actually penalize and discourage tired drivers from stopping to take a safety nap (of one, two, three or more hours) if tired. Why would anyone make such an unsafe rule? Every rest area gives lip service to “safety breaks,” yet Department of Transportation rules actually discourage this in practice.
Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Missouri-based Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, sums up the problem this way: “The (new) rules took away all the flexibility around planning for breaks and avoiding traffic congestion.”
“When your work day starts, it ends 14 hours later, no matter what you did in that time,” said Spencer in this NJ.com story. “So say after four or five hours, (a driver) gets into a congested urban area and thinks it would make sense to take a nap and take a break and wait for the traffic to go away. Your 14 hours doesn’t stop, putting you at risk of not making your destination before you run out of time. It’s nutty.”
