CRST Granted Exemption To Allow Non-CDL Holders To Drive By Themselves

Wait until the first bad crash involving an unsupervised permit holder occurs.

Uh, I had 30+ years of driving, all over the country (including New England) when I got my permit. But thank God my company requires trainers to be awake and in the passenger seat when trainees are driving.

Sorry, no good reason for this in my opinion.

Also keep in mind I had been driving a car for 25/years in the congestion of Philly/NJ/NY area and was used to crazy drivers heavy traffic snow and ice. That is a lot different from a 22 year old with one year of car driving from the rural south who never even seen snow let alone drove in it. I would imagine it would be much harder for that person to relax.

You're the exception, not the rule. If everyone were like you, we wouldn't need half the rules we have out here.

What about the foreign guys who can hardly speak or read English and haven't been driving long over here either? I don't care what race or skin color they have--that's not what this is about. I'm happy for them, that they could move to America and find work and support their families. But...I've heard stories from people I consider to be pretty reliable sources, including one of my own trainers, about the difficulties of training some (key word, "some") of these folks--and these guys already have their cdl. The language barrier alone is tough to deal with, not to mention many of them haven't been driving in the US for very long. One almost took the runaway truck ramp on a downgrade because he didn't understand what the signs meant.

What about people like me? I picked up driving pretty quickly, but still. I struggled with night driving alot at first. And as much as I hated my trainer sitting in the front seat, he was watching my trailer during turns, pulling into the fuel island, etc.

Dissolve the FMCSA for all I care. What we need is BETTER training. And instead of wasting federal funding on self-driving vehicles (that are going to have serious limitations) and special roads to accommodate these vehicles, how about better allocating that money toward more enforcement and more public transportation? And let's have stricter enforcement, not this 12 point BS system that lets people get away with murder. Let's cut it in half--6 points and you lose your license.

Sorry, I'm going down rabbit trails now.

I don't know why I even waste my time commenting on stuff like this. It's not like the FMCSA is going to read these comments and say, "Our bad! We didn't realize how stupid that was! We'll reverse our decision asap!"

What's interesting is if you look at crash statistics you'll see that the overwhelming majority of very serious truck crashes do not involve brand new drivers. It's the drivers that have been out there anywhere from a few months to a couple of years that tend to become overconfident, their decision making becomes careless, and they start doing more distracting things while behind the wheel like eating, cranking the tunes, or talking on their phones. That is when the really big wrecks happen.

New drivers rarely allow themselves any distractions, they almost never drive aggressively, and their decision making is normally very conservative. They wind up getting in a lot of dingers like backing into things or clipping someone's bumper coming around a tight corner in a truck stop.

So if they went by crash statistics alone, the FMCSA would probably order all drivers to go back into training around the three month mark or require cameras in the trucks to monitor for distracted or aggressive driving.

Myself and many others have wished for a long time that the government would set minimum standards for training and sponsor student loans to cover truck driving school the way they do other trade schools. That way private schools and trucking companies wouldn't be forced to train drivers under competitive circumstances where the fastest, cheapest programs get the most students.

There's a REASON WHY there's a CDL "Permit" - and the requirement for a CDL Licensed Driver to be riding shotgun.

The same goes for Learners Permits for a REGULAR DRIVERS LICENSE (yeah - we're talking 1975 for me, but hey).

This would be like saying it's OK to hit ONE CURB on a right hander during your road test - or to test everyone in an automatic, with no automatic restriction.

We know CRST has some, err, retention issues. They're not HORRIBLE as a starter company (or the MOST HORRIBLE) if you don't mind being teamed with someone for your entire time there. And you don't mind being hounded to the 7th gate of hell if you do 5 minutes less than your contractual obligation before leaving.

The only reason I even considered them when I was in school in '09 - was because they and Armellini (another team company that hauls flowers out of Miami) were the only people that hired from my zip code at that time (and still didn't go with them).

The fact that CRE was the other company to get this exemption, speaks volumes as to the intent behind this - and it CERTAINLY IS NOT to ensure the proper training of new CDL applicants.

I mean - 10K miles (average miles for CDL permitted drivers elsewhere) is a month of solo/supervised running, before testing out a driver. If a company can't manage that - perhaps they shouldn't be permitted to do CDL training AT ALL.

I was under the impression that CRST only took recent grads - I wasn't aware they started doing in-house training again.

This exemption is a grave disservice to both the driver/trainee, the motoring public and the industry as a whole.

It's no wonder they give these, without a comment period (as they do with rulemaking). Wonder who got greased to get this done?

Rick

I wonder how the jury will react in the first wrongful death case against CRST, when the driver was a permit holder, driving unsupervised.

CRST didn't get this exception without specifically asking for it. A lawyer will use that.

CRST is most likely self-insured.

I predict that CRST will be walking really funny after the jury gets done with them.

Steve L wrote:

Uh, I had 30+ years of driving, all over the country (including New England) when I got my permit. But thank God my company requires trainers to be awake and in the passenger seat when trainees are driving.

Sorry, no good reason for this in my opinion.

It doesn't specify the person accompanying the permit holder as a trainer of any experience, just a CDL holder. If we take the ruling at face value, the CDL holder in the bunk, sleeping while the permitted driver is in the first chair, might only have limited experience themselves. Regardless, to me it seems scary and my plan is to give them plenty of room.

Like I said, I hope a CRST Driver can describe their current or potentially revised training process.

Brett said:

New drivers rarely allow themselves any distractions, they almost never drive aggressively, and their decision making is normally very conservative. They wind up getting in a lot of dingers like backing into things or clipping someone's bumper coming around a tight corner in a truck stop.

True. But that doesn't make this ok in the least. All those dingers are what cost alot of new drivers their careers if they get too many of them in the first few months. If you can make it past the first little bit, you'll at least be hireable somewhere else if you are fired for little stuff. But lose your job two months out and you're in for a tough ride.

By the way Brett I realize you aren't saying this is OK.

I agree with you Rainy, and I happen to be a 23 year old from the south. I struggled when I got into real traffic and was very tense, but managed to push through it. Driving a truck on the highway is primarily about judgement and not necessarily about skill, I do believe that drivers who start in their 30's or 40's fair better in the judgment department.

Yes my trainer was sometimes more distracting than helpful but there were plenty of times where his input was valuable. I

Mine liked to talk on the phone a lot and that was distracting. Once in Atlanta I wasn't sure which way to go and was like "could you get the hell off the phone and help me" but still... In three weeks that was the worst of it.

I think the program could really break some students while others might excel. Which is sad cause that means some just don't have a real chance.