Trucking's united front on issues of truck parking, highway infrastructure improvement, and combating fraud of various stripes has yielded no small amount of progress alerting government to act on the need for reforms. Yet when it comes to the role of technology in assuming more and more of the driver's role behind the wheel, considerable divide remains on tech developments and/or mandates large and small.
The Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines and Safety of the Senate Commerce Committee convened a hearing Tuesday to assess a variety issues ahead of work put into reauthorization of federal transportation programs due next year with the coming expiration of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Subcommittee Chair Todd Young (R-Indiana) and members called together representatives from industry, collecting lengthy written testimony from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the American Trucking Associations, the Teamsters Union, and bus and motorcoach association representation.
Chair Young invoked the subcommittee's February hearing about an unprecedented rise in the incidence of cargo theft, resulting in subsequent bipartisan and bicameral legislation attacking the issue, as an example of just how valuable industry testimony can be to Congressmembers, particularly when there's clear consensus on the problems and ways to tackle them.
In Tuesday's hearing, considerable agreement among trucking representation was in evidence by near absence of discussion about the aforementioned issue of truck parking beyond witnesses' prepared testimony -- where ATA and OOIDA expressly called for federal dollars dedicated to expansion and improvement to an increasingly willing ear in Congress. Ongoing efforts to effectively enforce commercial drivers' required English proficiency, illegal cabotage, and licensing fraud along the Southern border all saw air, but little in the way of disagreement about issues of priority.
Witnesses and reps clashed, however, over technology's roles with respect to safety, recruiting and retention, and bedrock work opportunity in trucking. It's perhaps where truckers of all stripes can expect to see big fights over policy to come, all with a chance to distract lawmakers from what OOIDA Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh said in the hearing could be the "most pro-tucker, pro-safety" highway bill in history. He feels that way, he noted in testimony, given the current administration's regulators in his view have embraced a "new approach to developing trucking policy that prioritizes the needs of truckers," rather than the usual suspects among monied interests. He cited several moves:
- DOT reopening its public comment period for the broker transparency rulemaking earlier this year, a proposal he felt had clear "bipartisan support."
- The administration's move to return English proficiency violations to the out-of-service criteria.
- The package of nine "major initiatives to improve working conditions for truckers," Pugh noted, announced by DOT Secretary Sean Duffy June 27.
Some of the distractions Pugh highlighted were large carriers' opposition to OOIDA's work to prohibit "predatory lease-to-own scams that intentionally leave truckers broke and empty-handed," attempts by "trial lawyers" to increase minimum liability insurance levels, a push to mandate "unproven and cost-prohibitive equipment like side underride guards" and more.
For now, Pugh's at least heartened by Duffy's June 27 announcement, which signaled intent to put the brakes on some among the Biden administration's tech mandates, including the speed-limiter proposal and a putative move against the long-in-place pre-2000 engine exemption to the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate.
[Related: 'Leave us alone': ELD-exempt owner-ops say no to any change to pre-2000 ELD mandate exemption]
Yet as ATA President and CEO Chris Spear was quick to note in response to questioning from Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-New Mexico), the proposal for study and an eventual mandate of automatic emergency braking (AEB) technology in heavy-duty trucks was not among measures Duffy's DOT was prepared to back away from.
Lujan pointed to a tragic accident last month during which a truck set at a 65-mph cruise speed plowed into a blacksmith's shop "and the brakes were never applied," he said, killing two. Yet, he added, "technology exists to prevent this."
Spear underscored AEB technology's proven efficacy -- "we prefer the kind of technology where the accident doesn't happen and people don't get killed," he said, and emphasized its usefulness to truckers of all stripes in an increasingly chaotic highway environment plagued by fundamentally unpredictable motorist distraction.
Among Overdrive readers and small-business trucking associations, mandating AEB technology in new and/or existing trucks has been repeatedly flagged problematic given prevalence of "false positives," or automatic brakes engagement when it's unwarranted, a definite adverse impact for safety.
[Related: False-positive reports suggest AEBs not ready for prime time]
Spear and the ATA, though, in written testimony and before the committee, placed strong emphasis on safety benefits of technology, from those AEBs to increasingly automated driving systems.
Yet Pugh and, more vocally given many more questions directed by Senators to him, Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien pushed back. "I drove a truck my entire life," O'Brien said. "There’s no better computer than your brain, or your instinct." While O'Brien acknowleged a role to play for truly safety-improving technology, "our role is to protect these jobs" for the men and women behind the wheel. "I’ve seen firsthand how important it is to maintain these jobs."
The much-disputed and -debunked and -defended driver shortage notion reared its head repeatedly throughout the hearing, with usual suspects entrenched in their positions -- OOIDA and the Teamsters arguing truckload turnover points to real problems at individual companies, not a shortage, and ATA endorsing the shortage notion. O'Brien felt increasing automation and/or promotion of automated driving might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, ultimately: Who will want to drive a truck as a career prospect if it's all going to be automated in the trucks of tomorrow? he asked. Furthermore, he added, unleashed from the strictures of the hours of service -- allowed "to run wild," as he put it -- automated vehicles could well "destroy the infrastructure" lawmakers and individual constituencies around the nation have "fought long and hard to improve."
Spear, though, put Level 5, driver-out automated trucking at more than a decade away, realistically, outside of isolated use cases, as in Texas where companies are inching toward that reality. At the lower levels of autonomous operation with increasing automation of driving tasks, though, he urged the subcommittee to be aware of real safety gains and the need for a single regulatory standard at the federal level, rather than the 50-state patchwork approach of today.
"It’s always described as a threat to jobs, threat to jobs," he repeated, calling such arguments a "red herring" in his view. With economic growth, he felt, automation of heavy-duty trucking would more likely supplement existing truckers' continued work.
O'Brien wasn't exactly buying Spear's or others' conservative timelines for autonomous, truly "driverless" tech development. "If Big Tech could have this done tomorrow, and corporations could operate" driverless without the need to pay driver "wages and benefits," O'Brien said, "they'd do it tomorrow."
Access witnesses' extensive written testimonies for comprehensive association priorities, and keep tuned for more from the hearing itself:
- Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association
- American Trucking Associations
- Teamsters Union
- American Bus Association
[Related: When will owner-operators have to compete with truly 'driverless' trucks?]
