As truckers, we're no strangers to the long haul, but what happens when the rules of the road threaten to hit the brakes on our livelihood? Rollin' 18 zooms into the fierce debate over the proposed speed limiter mandate that could cap Class 7 and 8 commercial vehicles at a snail's pace of 55 mph. Amidst a storm of over 14,000 comments to the Federal Register, I unpack the real-life consequences of this ruling on our community, from slashed revenues to the looming specter of increased sleep deprivation. And while the government waves the flag of traffic fatality statistics, I challenge their narrative, pointing out the post-pandemic behaviors and the frequent responsibility of non-commercial drivers in highway accidents.
Then, it's time to shift down a gear and talk safety on the asphalt jungle, as I share a personal story that'll have you nodding in agreement or shaking your head in frustration. I got a ticket for dodging a lumbering truck, which cemented my belief in driving safely and sensibly, especially through the concrete mazes of our cities. We also roll over OOIDA's perspective and the dicey stats behind federal speed limiter mandates, ultimately steering us towards the same destination – safety is king on the open road. Whether you're piloting a big rig or a tiny two-door, staying sharp and responsible is your ticket to a smooth ride. Join me – your ears will thank you for it.
Text me anytime with news, suggestions, and stories at (641) 990-5641. God bless, be safe, and keep it between the lines drivers.
As truckers, we're no strangers to the long haul, but what happens when the rules of the road threaten to hit the brakes on our livelihood? Rollin' 18 zooms into the fierce debate over the proposed speed limiter mandate that could cap Class 7 and 8 commercial vehicles at a snail's pace of 55 mph. Amidst a storm of over 14,000 comments to the Federal Register, I unpack the real-life consequences of this ruling on our community, from slashed revenues to the looming specter of increased sleep deprivation. And while the government waves the flag of traffic fatality statistics, I challenge their narrative, pointing out the post-pandemic behaviors and the frequent responsibility of non-commercial drivers in highway accidents.
Then, it's time to shift down a gear and talk safety on the asphalt jungle, as I share a personal story that'll have you nodding in agreement or shaking your head in frustration. I got a ticket for dodging a lumbering truck, which cemented my belief in driving safely and sensibly, especially through the concrete mazes of our cities. We also roll over OOIDA's perspective and the dicey stats behind federal speed limiter mandates, ultimately steering us towards the same destination – safety is king on the open road. Whether you're piloting a big rig or a tiny two-door, staying sharp and responsible is your ticket to a smooth ride. Join me – your ears will thank you for it.
Text me anytime with news, suggestions, and stories at (641) 990-5641. God bless, be safe, and keep it between the lines drivers.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Rollin' 18 Podcast. This 40-year veteran is here for anyone wanting to stay up to date with the trucking world. Grab your coffee, hop on board and let's get on down the road with Walter Gatlin.
Speaker 2:
Appreciate you both listening to my podcast on Buzzsprout. Also, there's about 22 other different places you can go, including Spotify and Amazon and Apple, itunes and iHeartRadio. Yeah, yeah, I'm all over the place now, so we're going to make this a big thing. Today's story is going to be about the speed limiters. The United States government put out a notice that they were going to look for suggestions from truck drivers. Now, right now, as of this moment, there are 14,000 and growing comments posted to the Federal Register on the subject of speed limiters.
Speaker 2:
The opinion has been anything but muted about the federal government's renewed push to require all Class 7 and 8 commercial vehicles in the US to be limited to an as-yet be determined speed. Now, my guess is that they are going to push for 55 miles an hour. It may be an average. They may average it out to what the speeds are across the United States and make it 65. But I am telling you right now that the United States government is wanting to limit all trucks. This is what they are wanting to limit all trucks to 55. I can honestly tell you that if they do that, probably close to half of the truck drivers driving today will quit, and that is not a fantasy, that's not a fallacy. That is a fact, because most drivers will not, they cannot tolerate doing 55. Even the ones that are locked down to 65 and 68, they do not want to do 55. When you cut down a person's speed let's say they're set at 65, and we talked about this before as well and they drop them down to 55, they're losing somewhere around the neighborhood of $34,000 a year in revenue Anywhere from 28 to 34,000, I think, is what it was that I came up with to calculate. Don't quote me on it, but it is a lot.
Speaker 2:
So they're going to have to do something about that, on top of the fact that people are now most people are driving automatics. So then you're going to have them do 55. You're going to end up with a lot more sleep deprivation. I promise you that too, because speed is one thing that keeps people awake. If they are driving at a speed that is so comfortable, you would just basically bounce off a wall and nothing would happen. They're going to fall asleep easier. That's all there is to it. Just like if you're going down in a parking lot at 10 miles an hour, your hands aren't even going to be on the steering wheel. You're going to be doing other things. You're going to be looking other ways. You're not going fast enough to really do any damage, doing anything at all, especially in a wide, open parking lot. But you know what I'm saying? It is going to make people complacent. They are going to get tired faster and they are going to fall asleep more.
Speaker 2:
Now a top federal government safety officer, jack Van Steenburg, s-t-e-e-n-b-u-r-g, who cares, framed the issue starkly with statistics on June 6 at the Truckload Carriers Association annual safety and security meeting, followed by a regulatory update by David Heller. He says a lot of people are getting killed out on the highways. What he did not mention, through his fantastic speech of bashing truck drivers, is that the vast majority of truck versus car accidents are the four-wheelers fault. I'm sorry, if all you drive is a four-wheeler and you're offended by that, I can't help you. You'll have to go see a psychologist to find out exactly what makes your brain hurt. When somebody actually gives you facts. Okay, that is a deprivation of something that you need to get fixed, because facts are the fact. You're never going to change the facts. That is what the facts are. The vast majority of car versus big truck accidents are caused by the car. So let's get past. That Says a lot of people are getting killed. And he said, before citing statistics, that headline the Biden administration's push under the National Roadway Safety Strategy to address speeding, fmcsa's proposed speed limiter mandate for heavy-duty trucks, published as a notice of intent on April 27th.
Speaker 2:
I will put the link out again. If they are still taking comments, then I will go ahead and put that link on there. I'm going to click on the comment section to see if it's still open, just to see. Now it seems here that the comment section speed limiter devices, blah, blah, blah Looks like the page is still open. I will put the link there. If you can comment, do so. Let them know exactly how you feel about speed limiters now.
Speaker 2:
According to widely circulated 2021 preliminary data from the national highway traffic safety administration, nhtsa, and cited by Van Steenburg, 42,915 people died last year in motor vehicle crashes, a 10.5% increase from 38,824 fatalities. I wonder why that was. Why don't we go prior to COVID? I'm sure a lot of people were still not on the road, a lot of people were still hunkered down in their house. So, yeah, that doesn't seem too good. And the fact that we heard studies before also of people getting released from their homes. After a year, year and a half lockdown. They're going to drive a lot faster, they're going to feel freer. They're not going to return. The rubber band is not going to stop vibrating for at least one to two years after everybody, after the entire country, releases everybody from this. And that's exactly what it was.
Speaker 2:
So this this uh survey here, this statistic fatalities is not without errors, because they're not factoring in the fact of things that I just mentioned to you. So we have to take that into consideration. But I know the vast majority of accidents between four wheelers and trucks, the four wheeler is mostly at fault. So here's what we're going to do. He's going to say that there is 42, let's say 43,000 people died last year let's say 38,000. Those facts are probably true.
Speaker 2:
Where is the difference between the truck and the four-wheeler? Because the only ones being penalized with a speed limiter is the semi. So I don't know what you plan on accomplishing moving all the trucks into the right lane, leaving them there at 55 miles an hour, just to have somebody who's heavier than somebody else try and pass somebody on a downhill grade and then get stuck next to him on an uphill grade, because then you're going to have road rage and the amount of vehicles crashing with semis is going to go up. Four-wheelers are going to get more aggressive and they're going to create more danger by committing road rage against semis. And a lot of that happens out there. We know this to be a fact. Uh, why they're not combating that issue? Why they're not putting people in jail first defense for slamming on their brakes in front of a semi because they're pissed? I mean that is a jailable. That should be a minimum one year incarceration, because you have just risked the lives of not only everybody in your vehicle but the driver and or drivers that are in that semi and anybody else that semi may land on once he crashes and flips. That is attempted murder.
Speaker 2:
As far as I look at it now, it says here, honing in on the proposed speed limiter rule, van steenberg said that the fmcsa still is gathering the comments from industry holders, stakeholders. So it's about money. I thought you wanted information from the truck driver to find out why it would be unsafe to lock a vehicle down at 55 miles an hour when the rest of the world can do 65, 70, 75, 80. Yeah See, none of this is really going to go anywhere fast and they will come up with a rule, I guarantee you. Uh, all the trucks, basically, are electronic now, so they will have the, the components inside the truck to force a company to lock all the trucks down to whatever the federal government says. And 90% of all of the truck companies out there are going to do exactly what they're told, because that's what they do. And then you're going to have a few out there, the rebels, the ones that are out in the middle of nowhere. You got five, 10 trucks. Whatever they're going to say, yeah, right, okay, just like the ones that got away with not putting DEF tanks on their truck. It'll happen and you're not going to stop that.
Speaker 2:
In his regulatory update in June 6th session that followed, they had the draft of the FMCSA's rulemaking, which is that to propose the top limit for Class 7 and 8 trucks calls on their speeds to be governed through their electronic engine control devices, their ECUs, of course. That's what I was just talking about. The big question will be where speeds will be set at, and I am banking on saying they want 55, but I am banking they're going to go with 60 or 65. Mark my words on that. I'm banking on it. He also noted the government is operating from the framework of a bill introduced in the House of Representatives, the Column Owning Large Truck Safe Operation Speed Act. That would have required new heavy-duty trucks to be equipped with speed limiter technology and for the devices to be installed on all used commercial vehicles built after 1992.
Speaker 2:
Man, are they digging deep Now? That bill governs speeds at 65 or at 70, with certain safety technologies aboard, such as ACC and AEB. And if you don't know what ACC and AEB is, look it up, because I don't have time on this podcast for that. Just Google what is ACC or AEB? The National Roadway Safety Strategy also calls on widespread adoption of AEB and lane departure warning systems for commercial vehicles. Now a lot of people have those. My brother has been driving for a company for a while. Their new trucks have those on there. It warns them when they're leaving the lane, even just a little bit. It warns them when traffic's coming up on the left or right side of them, which is kind of cool. I'm not against new technology at all, but not everybody's happy about this speed limiter thing.
Speaker 2:
There are a thousand different scenarios that we as truck drivers go through where we need that speed. I mean, you're going down a hill and you're getting ready to come up another hill. Do you want to get slowed down to 45 on a full load, or 35? Or do you want to get slowed down to 10? I was in California two years ago and I come up on a truck going up this hill before Bakersfield. The truck in the right lane was doing 10 miles anfield, the truck in the right lane was doing 10 miles an hour, the truck in the left lane was doing 10 miles an hour. And the only option I had because I was empty I delivered in LA and I was going up north, to somewhere up north of Bakersfield, off of 99, to get loaded. I don't remember the name of the city Tracy, california, something like that, I don't know. No, it wasn't Tracy. Tracy's off of five, okay, or something like that, I don't know. No, it wasn't Tracy. Tracy's off of five, okay, anyway.
Speaker 2:
So what I do? I get over in the third lane. Rather than crash, or rather than slow down to 10 miles an hour and cause even more congestion, I get over in the third lane, I pass within five seconds and I'm doing probably 45 miles an hour. Everything went perfect. Half a mile later I get these lights and sirens behind me. Some motorcycle cop pulls me over, writes me a ticket. I get the ticket. I tell a cop hey look, whatever you know, I didn't want to crash in the back of that 10 mile an hour truck. They had both my lanes blocked.
Speaker 2:
You guys have restricted trucks to the two right lanes in certain areas. In certain areas you restrict the truck to the far right lane, which to me, the safest lane for any truck that's going through is the far left lane. But everybody complains about it. If you're going through and you have no intention of hitting an exit, the safest lane anywhere in America is the far left lane, especially when you're going through a city. Set it at the speed limit, cruise right through, no problems, no traffic shooting in and out of you. Everybody thinks the four-wheeler owns the left lane. They don't. You are allowed to pass as long as you're not speeding.
Speaker 2:
Once you're speeding, you're breaking the law. You've caught up to me. I didn't slow you down, you caught up to me. So how you get around me is your freaking problem. If I'm doing the speed limit and I'm doing it safely through a city, which I always do? I don't hammer down unless I'm out in the open highway. I'm driving through a city, I'm doing the speed limit and you get stuck behind me. Screw you. Okay, I'm going to tell you flat out.
Speaker 2:
When you caught up to me because you're breaking the law, you put yourself in that position. I'm not in your way. You, you put yourself in that position. I'm not in your way. You got in your own way and I will believe that until the day I die. And I learned that in the 80s when I started driving a truck. You got to go with the flow, my friend. And if you think you want to do 75 miles an hour through a city when traffic is coming to a standstill, off and on, you go right for it. You're not going to blame me, because I'm keeping an eye on things and I'm doing things the right way, and you can call it whatever you want, but the point is I call you irresponsible as hell. If you don't have enough patience to wait to get out of the city to hammer down, you deserve whatever you get, including your own attitude and getting pissed off at me. You can do that all day long. It doesn't bother me a bit. I got SXM radio, I can turn the volume up.
Speaker 2:
Owner operators and smaller fleets are up in arms over the possible federal speed limiter mandate. The trade group representing them, the owner operator independent drivers association if you are an owner operator, I suggest you check it out. The oida has come out forcefully against it. In may, the oA Foundation noted that 78% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occur where posted speed limits are 65 miles an hour or below. So not only do you have a circumstance and a statistical fact where most vehicle versus semi-truck accidents are caused by the four-wheeler, you also have a statistical fact that 78% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occur where posted speed limits are 65 miles an hour or below. What does that tell you? That tells you that the vast majority of accidents that happen over 65 miles an hour are minimal. It tells you that when you are going slower, people are more apt.
Speaker 2:
Like I said before, 55,. You get complacent, you get tired, you don't pay attention. 65 miles an hour or below, what happens? Everybody gets comfortable. You're in that comfort zone. You're not willing to make, or you are willing to make, an erratic lane change. You're willing to go in and out of traffic just to keep going. You know, when you're going at a slower speed you feel like Superman and you're not. What you are is, you're driving like a fool in most cases. So the point I'm trying to get at is I believe this study it is a factual study 78% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occur where posted speed limits are 65 or below. Everybody gets complacent. You don't get complacent when you're puckering, and when you're puckering is when you're booking it. Thanks again, god bless, be safe and, as always, keep it between the lines. Driver Breaker 1-9.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to Roland 18 Podcast. Please visit my website at MediaIowacom or the podcast page at Roland18podcastcom.