Nighty Night

Today's Thoughts By Jeff Head 2/17/13 Nighty Night
Let us see here, they took about fifty three people a week if I understand this right. From January Twenty Ten, spending who knows how many millions of our tax dollars; all the way until May of Twenty Eleven and watched them sleep. During this time, they let them sleep in several different shifts each containing ten hours a day. The shifts were from ten pm at night to eight am in the morning. Then there was a split sleep shift from three am to eight am with a three pm to eight pm time period so as to finish up that shift. Then a final sleep shift of ten am to eight pm. To sum up, an all day sleeping period, a split the same time everyday sleeping period and finally an all night sleeping period.

The participants of this great study were all between twenty two and forty years old. All with a body mass index of less than thirty in order to reduce random factors affecting the data. The study was done by a Doctor Greg Belenky and all of this, is according to an article in The Trucker that I read the other day. The results of said study were used to determine FMCSAs hours of service criteria for truck drivers. What I am trying to figure out about this study is what if anything, any of this has to do with the normal everyday operations of a real world truck driver.

For starters, the sleeping times only work if you just happen to be a local driver home each day. As for the rest of us over the road types, our start and stopping times do not even get close to being regulated or started on time each day. We are forced by the nature of the business to be ready within minutes to go from a deep sleep to wide open within seconds. I guess you could look at us working more like a swing shift type of situation.

Also sleeping in a nice cozy sleep lab is nothing even close to being forced to spend eighteen hours in the hot desert sun unable to idle keeping us in cool environment. No food or even access to a rest room is something that none of these participants were subjected to as truckers often find themselves dealing with. Now, let us crank down the windows so that we do not suffocate in the heat as we try to sleep as we worry about what is going to crawl in with us. Not to be found in this study.
As for the age of the participants, I am sure twenty two to forty years of age is a awesome time of your life to kick back in some sleep study and get paid for it, but out here in the real world I regularly kick back and enjoy a meal down at the restaurant with a driver well past seventy. Half of the time we talk about how over regulation is keeping us up at night. As for the body mass index part of the study, under thirty, are you kidding me? Perfectly healthy specimens without a care in the world instead of beat to death road warriors that have more on their minds then what the good Doctor Belenky, a fine person I am sure; has planned for their next meal.

Could this study have been done any further from the reality of real life trucking? Does the FMCSA really believe that some skinny twenty two year old kid probably never worked a job in their life can be used to show them what this fifty year old, thirty year veteran truck driver can do. A driver that takes as much pride in running a safe and legal trucking operation as that kid takes in playing their video games. Lets get real here. This study was done in such a way that it has absolutely nothing to do with trucking. And from this study, they now are forcing truckers into yet again, another set of new hours of service rules starting just around the corner.

Putting people up in a nice cozy sleep labs has nothing to do with the real life aspects of trucking. From the perfect sleep schedule to the unrealistic supposed to be truck drivers all the way to comparing the different conditions of a nice cozy sleep lab as compared to the cab of a truck, the FMCSA really missed the boat on this one. And now Anne Ferro is wanting some trucking company to do a pilot test program so as to prove what the study shows. More grant money handed out chasing the trillions of dollars that this country is already in debt.

Here is a clue for the clueless that regulate the trucking industry. Get off our backs. Give us our eleven hours driving time in any giving twenty four hour period and let me, you know the one actually sitting behind the wheel, decided when it is I am sleepy and need to take a break. Stop trying to be a God and guessing from your desk thousands of miles away and who knows how many years ago when it is that I am sleepy today, right here, with what I am dealing with at this moment.

I know, it will never happen. The folks up there on the hill are complete control freaks. But it is our jobs as safe and legal truckers to continue to try and hammer the true facts into them so that maybe, just maybe, once in a while they might just get something right.

Be safe peeps. God Bless America
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