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The eld's do not have enough flexibility built in. For example Just two nights I had plenty of time to get to the customer but ran into heavy fog and had to reduce my speed to 50 so that I ended up running out of time 20 minutes from the customer. If i where to take my 10 break I would not be able to make my 7:00 appointment! Also what gets my goat is when fmcsa and Dot preaches safety and passes HOS regs then closes down rest area's without replacing with another! I could give you tons of pictures of nearly every rest area where trucks are over flowing into the on and off ramps. Every time a new truck stop opens up its filled to capacity immediately every night! Now tell me where did those truckers go before it opened! That's right, they had to keep on driving tired and spending time looking for a safe place! Their talk of safety is a load of BS! Another example... Why are the breakdown lanes so narrow or nonexistent that truck repair crews are forced to stick out into traffic just to change a driver's side tire?! Same thing happens to the police when they pull someone over! Now add ice and snow or rain and fog and it's just asking for a huge catastrophe! I don't want to hear about another law being passed for "Our Safety" until they actually MAKE the roads safer to travel!!

I think that it has been pretty obvious that the HOS or e logs have harmed safety more than help. I listened to an interesting interview with Mike Rowe, the dirty jobs guy. He stated that the most dangerous crosswalks in the US are the crosswalks that have a lit sign, telling someone when it is safe to walk across the street. His point was, the lit up cross walk sign trains people to not LOOK at anything but the sign before walking, therefore, if you rely on the sign, you get killed by a person running a stop light. I thought that was a great comparison to fmcsa safety guidelines. We have taken away the human ability to judge when my human brain is fatigued, because it doesn't matter if I didn't sleep well last night, all that matters is the daily cycle of that clock. We are taking the human OUT OF BEING HUMAN. Millions of years of experience and evolution has tought us how to be good at staying alive and keeping others alive, and HOS and ELD cripples that, on top of crippling work ethic.

Dave, I believe we will never get to see any real data. We will never get to see an un-skewed statistic on livestock haulers. I don't know the actual statistic so don't concentrate on the stat, it's just an example....I thought I read somewhere that a few years ago, the actual percent of accidents in the trucking industry that are related to fatigue are around 2 percent, again I could be wrong, but regardless, how many of those accidents are legitimately due to fatigue, and how many accidents were RULED fatigue by a court because someone was 56 minutes over on HOS??? Was this actually fatigue? Or is it just ruled fatigue because HOS makes a lawyer's job easier, not a case of physically being tired?

I think it's important to stand up against this crap. But how? Black smoke matter looks like one gigantic unified verbal MMA fight. I hate to say it because everyone definitely deserves to have their opinion and stand up for it, but any trucker in support of these HOS and ELD are just plain lazy. I think they feel guilty when hard nosed work ethic beats them. And support of HOS is easier than just plain getting to work! Yeah I've heard the argument that they hope rates go up, so supporting hour limitations can hopefully make it so you don't HAVE TO run the clock out every day....well, my goal from the second I leave my family is, get back here as quickly as possible. If I got paid 10 bucks a mile, I'd still run the clock out every day just to get home and be with the family Friday Saturday and Sunday. I've done well the last year trucking, it was my first year. I'm a failed farmer, dealing with getting kicked out of banks, un manageable farm debt and trucking is digging me out. Work ethic is digging me out, and if I see truckers in favor of these hours, I believe they are self conscious of their own work ethic and I think they are a great target. I will aim for their customers.

DO NOT FORGET the level playing field aspect of the ELD mandate. Big corporate worked on it for years. It has been astonishing and sad to see so many allow themselves to herded like cattle. Crazy unnatural behavior.

I had a lane violation in Atlanta kinda like that. I was up against the guard rail and on the white line. I wouldn't get out of the truck. The fool said he would stand there to protect me from the traffic. I climbed out the right side and over the rail and stood in front of my truck.