Didn’t take any courage for me, as I say, I already had my pension locked in and I had had a target on my back for filing a grievance because they were cheating us miles on every run and also because I would not lie on my log book so I could make illegally long runs. When the dispatcher would tell me other drivers were making those runs, I would tell him, I don’t care what others are doing but if you keep pressuring me about it I will go to the DOT and then nobody will be doing it.
I think the only reason They did not try harder to fire me is that I was the guy that always got through in the winter.
There is frequently a push from business leaders to cut costs by cutting corners on safety, and innocent bystanders often pay the price. About 20 years ago a dump truck’s rear axle snapped in half while barreling down I-95 in South Florida and someone was killed. Investigators determined it was from a lack of safety inspections and maintenance, and that there were visible signs it should have been caught before it broke.
When I went to truck driving school, one of my fellow students went to work for his family’s business driving a logging truck. The trucks were deliberately neglected in order to save money, and often failed roadside DOT inspections.
The problem is that it’s cheaper to settle out of court with the victims than it is to do proper maintenance. We need to fix that. If corporations really were people, as the Supreme Court decided, they would be subject to the death penalty, just like people. We need to increase the severity of prison terms and fines for CEOs and other managers who cut costs on safety. They aren’t swayed by ethical or moral considerations, so we need to find a way to make compliance in their best interest.
Yes, yes, and yes. It’s obvious the free market does not self regulate, certain politicians’ claims to the contrary. If the free market self regulated, Ford would not exist because no one would have bought their product after the Pinto Memo came to light.
The only way to secure public safety is to have an independent authority keeping things kosher. And yes, sometimes that independent authority gets an official who takes bribes (though honestly @oldtimer-11, if I were to take a bribe I’d want something better than Crown Royal ).
You deal with that by firing and imprisoning the corrupt official, not by throwing your hands up and saying “Whelp! What can ya do! Just gotta let businesses run themselves!”
Yes, some bureaucrat regulators take things too literally, like when someone insists that VA housing for a disabled veteran who has no hands be equipped with hand rails in the shower, but that’s why we fix the problem by giving regulators discretion to make exceptions for rules that don’t make sense. What we don’t do is decide not to offer protection afforded by the regulations to the people who need them.
What you’re discussing, whether commercial trucks undergo safety inspections when they cross international borders, is not a faith-based belief or issue. It’s a matter of verifiable fact.
That’s some serious gaslighting you’re doing, casting doubt on the legal profession as a whole based on a conspiracy theory. Wow.
I have been out of town for a few days, and others have addressed this more capably than I. There’s certainly no requirement of an evidence base for commentary here, but if you’re starting from a position of belief, Bing, and then when presented with some information that doesn’t support your belief you say that nobody can be trusted anyhow, it tells us that you’re going to believe it anyway. This applies to several of you, so I’ll say it again, but please apply a higher standard of scrutiny before you make general, value-laden statements about any group of people, particularly racial and ethnic groups. We’ve also been through this with poor people and trans people.
Yep, that’s a two way street though, but I have no first hand knowledge of the trucking industry. I would just question the reliability of an 8 year old white paper from a law firm with a heavy clientele of same. But let the beatings continue. Based on accident reports though I “believe” there are many trucking accidents due to over-worked and maybe unqualified drivers whether domestic or not. There has been a critical shortage of drivers so companies may hire whatever they can and push them as hard as they can, not just armored truck drivers. A few years ago locally a truck loaded with bees crashed into stopped traffic with fatal results. There were quite a few news reports on the cause. But I’ll defer to all you trucking experts for more reliable information.
The box of Cuban cigars sealed the deal. And there were a whole lot of trucking companies to inspect in the Buffalo area. It was standard operating procedure in the trucking industry before companies could compete on price to deliver regular gifts to traffic manager or shipping clerks to get them to direct shipments to your company. Hockey tickets were another popular perk.
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