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Do Louisiana motor carriers keep their drivers far too long at work?

Keeping track of the service hours of truck drivers is essential in the fight to prevent Louisiana truck accidents. After spending too many hours at work several days in a row, driving or loading and unloading, a trucker’s focus and reaction time will collapse. Several factors are at play:

Sleep deprivation: Being awake longer than the conventional 16-17 hours per day has adverse effects on the driver’s performance. This works cumulatively when the sleep deficit adds up day after day, or if the night’s sleep is broken into two short sleep periods.

Circadian rhythm: Human beings follow a normal cycle of attentiveness and sleepiness throughout a 24-hour period. The cycle, although slightly different for each individual, generally follows the succession of light and dark hours, and cannot be fully displaced when the working hours are moved from day to night or vice-versa.

Time-on-task fatigue: People who work in industry know that the performance of a task will vary during the hours of a shift, irrespectively of the above-mentioned factors. This happens both at the beginning of a shift, when the worker adjusts to the task and environment, and more steeply at the end, when the worker gets tired and bored.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) hours of service regulations have been designed to make sure truckers are not kept behind the wheel beyond their normal capacity of staying awake and driving safely.

What are Hours of Service (HOS)?

The HOS regulation states four different hours:
On-duty time: This includes all the hours spent in job-related activities, including driving, which is monitored separately: loading, unloading, supervising, maintaining, servicing, waiting, controls, etc. The maximum time allowed is 14 hours.

Driving time: Time spent at the driving controls of the truck. The maximum time allowed is 11 hours.

Sleeper berth time: Time spent resting or sleeping in the sleeper berth. The minimum time is ten hours. This can be replaced by eight hours sleeper berth and two hours off-duty.

Off-duty time: This indicates any remaining time.
Further rules define the maximum work hours per week: 60 hours in seven consecutive days or 70 hours in eight consecutive days.

Where is the problem? The problem lies in the enforcement, since HOS monitoring is still being done on log books with carbon copies, which are easy to forge. Some drivers carry two different sets of log books, one for the boss and one for the officials. Another problem arises with the way truckers are being paid. If paid by the mile, carriers will pay them based on mapping software and not on logged miles or odometer miles. This allows drivers to under-report mileage and on-duty time and over-report off-duty time.

Electronic monitoring systems following the hours of service, mileage, speed, standstills, and route are compulsory in many countries, but are only being used by several high profile hauling companies in the USA. Making the so-called Electronic On Board Recorders (EOBRs) compulsory is the FMCSA’s goal for the coming years, but various carriers associations are resistant to this idea.

If you have been hurt in an accident caused by a truck in Louisiana, then immediately contact the Young Firm in New Orleans for a free consultation of your case. You may call our truck accident attorney at (504) 680-4100 (local) or (866) 660-7220 (toll free), or send us an e-mail.

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