Study Suggest That The ELD Mandate Causes Unsafe Driving Behavor.

I get an occasional email from a website called Truckers Report. The latest post has an interesting article about the ELD mandate:

According to federal regulators, Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) were supposed to make roads safer. Instead, a comprehensive report on the effect of ELDs nationwide has found that unsafe driving behavior has “increased significantly” since ELD enforcement began. A team of researchers from Northeastern University and the University of Arkansas has published a report on the effect of the ELD mandate. Using inspection, violation, and crash data from the FMCSA , the researchers examined a year before the ELD mandate went into effect, three months during the “soft enforcement” period, and five months from after full enforcement went into effect Pre-ELD, truck accidents averaged 1,717 per week. That increased to 1,912 per week during the soft enforcement period, and fell again to 1,703 during full enforcement. According to the report, “there is no evidence to suggest” that ELDs helped prevent accidents. While the report does say that HOS compliance increased significantly under ELDs, it also points out the drawbacks of the rigid HOS structure. According to the report, “unsafe driving violations increased significantly.” As more drivers adopted ELDs, the number of unsafe driving violations – such as speeding – spiked. And amongst those groups who had lower levels of voluntary ELD use (such as owner-operators and small fleets), those violations increased even more. At the end of the report, the researchers claim that ELDs “unequivocally enhanced HOS compliance.” But because of that, ELDs “incentivize an increase in unsafe driving behavior, which is more tightly correlated to accident rates than hours of service violations.” As a result, the report finds that “the effect of the [ELD mandate] is that accidents actually increased by between 2,290 and 3,266 per year here is the link to the entire article https://www.thetruckersreport.com/whoops-eld-mandate-actually-increases-accidents-unsafe-driving-behavior-says-report/

I've been surprised at this study. Not so much by their conclusions, but by how quickly they came to them. The transition wasn't very well executed and there's still a lot of people fighting it. There will need to be a good many years of data to come up with a realistic idea about any safety correlation with ELDs. I honestly never realized they were attempting to improve safety. I was always under the impression it was for compliance to the rules.

And Chris, I'm very careful about information from that website. I can't spend five minutes there without it turning my stomach.

Not discounting this particular thread that was linked. I visited that site once and read for about an hour, decided I wouldn't go back because to me it seemed as if they were all crotchety mothers-in-law just looking for something to gripe about. Like they can't be happy unless they find something that they can get upset about.

So basically it confirmed that the HOS is the problem... not the ELD?!?!?! Say whaaattt?

That seems to some odd conclusions. They used a small sample and yes of course there were an increase of service violations the paper log cheats are now getting caught. As for the increase in accidents there could be no cause or collation or it could be the cheats being more reckless since they have to play by the rules of service.

That site seems to be the home of the super trucker in my untrained/experience opinion.

I'm an o/o and I am totally for elds. I like them a lot.

But like old school said, the implementation was horrible.

My first eld company lasted a year and went out of business. My second company doesn't have theirs programmed correctly. When I put myself in sleeper for 8 hours I get all my time back. I tried telling them, but talking to their customer service in India didn't do anything except confuse them. So I'm looking for a third company.

I have too been surprised how fast and furious, (no pun intended) this study came out. They are right and we have all noticed some of it. More trucks doing stupid things out here in construction zones, school zones, speeding in truck stops etc. These drivers all say the same thing. “I have to make up time”. These knuckleheads have no idea of simple math. Your not making up anything significant by speeding, however you're increasing your chances of a crash 10 fold. Plus a lot of them are not used to time management at all, so instead of stopping and taking a nap they push on. What they should have done was gotten more rest when they had the chance. I have run both ways and I much prefer the e logs. The rollout was horrible for us as well as law enforcement. The feds aren’t too quick to admit it for the most part. Changing the off duty personal conveyance rule was a huge admit on their part in my opinion.

I saw this article as well and decided it was a bunch of cow dung. The problem I see and gripes I hear are the all the old timer OOs can't cheat the system anymore. They say it's unfair. Before they had to run on elogs , they has two or three sets of logs and ran how they wanted. Now they all have to follow the same rules and they are ****ed. They complain that they can't make money. The reason for that is they now have to play by the rules. This is not about safety it is about money. Just look at the groups that want it and the ones that don't.

And Chris, I'm very careful about information from that website. I can't spend five minutes there without it turning my stomach.

One could say the same about this board..If one comes in here and makes a comment about Prime or Swift they are attacked like a rabid dog.

No, they are met with truth. that's what we do here.

If one comes in here and makes a comment about Prime or Swift they are attacked like a rabid dog.

A blanket statement like that, however, is false, and will be treated as such.

Open debates are welcome here. But when you paint everything with a broad brush like that, you lose your credibility.