We work in a world filled with devices that can monitor us, locate us, and tell us what to do.
That raises the question — who watches you
work?
And how does work change when you know someone’s
watching you do it?
There’s one industry that’s asking that
question more than ever: trucking.
Self driving semi trucks.
Programmed to follow routes from GPS systems
while the driver rests.
Over time, automation will dramatically change
work for the 3.5 million truck drivers in
America.
But until then, truckers are going to be monitored
and managed by computers like never before.
And if you want to know what happens when
people start to reject that kind of monitoring
— here’s what that looks like.
It’s like wearing an ankle bracelet where
you’re being tracked, every move you make.
We are against this law because this is ruining
our truckers’ lives.
I want the government to get out of the way,
and give you the opportunity to be a success.
This is the Department of Transportation during
a week of trucker-organized demonstrations
in October 2017.
They’re here protesting these things called
Electronic Logging Devices, or ELDs.
What these are —
They're protesting these things called —
These are computers that go inside
a car, hook up to the car’s engine, and
monitor location, driving status, how fast
a car is going, and basically report that information
back to an employer.
They also manage a driver’s workday based
on a strict schedule designed by the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration to limit
driver fatigue.
Truckers can drive for a maximum of 11 hours
per day — but they have to take a 30 minute
break somewhere in between.
They can work an additional 3 non-driving
hours, but have to take a 10 hour break before
they can start driving again.
As of December 2017, these devices are mandatory
in all trucks across the country.
Oftentimes when we talk about automation in trucking
and other workplace contexts, there's a big
concern about a massive spike in unemployment.
But oftentimes, the way this gets discussed
is that it's like human-human-human-robot.
And you see a big spike in unemployment.
And what I think is more realistic is the
curve is more gradual, right?
So you do see robots starting to get integrated
into the work, but not in a sudden way.
That invites is kind of interesting question:
what happens along the curve?
And the answer is that you’re going to see
more integration between machines carrying
out some part of the job and humans carrying
out some part of the job.
Truckers across the US have been preparing
for the first big step on that curve: working
alongside ELDs.
This is the ELD, right here.
Talking about the ELD mandate.
Transitioning everyone into the ELDs now.
But the one-size-fits-all schedule that this
device imposes is not new.
The strict breakdown of driving, non-driving,
and sleeping time has been used in one form
or another since 1938.
The longer drivers go without a break, the
higher the rate of fatigue-related accidents.
So the system was designed to limit a trucker’s
driving time to fit natural sleep patterns.
So this is kind of the analog technology that
the digital one is supposed to replace.
But circumventing those rules was quite common
with paper logbooks, since they could be changed
by hand.
Like if you sat down and looked at this for
five minutes you would figure out how to falsify
it if you needed to right?
It’s pretty imprecise.
So ELDs aren’t necessarily creating any
new rules, but they’re making the existing
ones a lot harder to break.
For truckers paid by the mile, that translates
into an intense pressure to drive as much
as they possibly can within the 11-hour time
limit.
They can’t pause without actively losing
money.
Soon as you turn that key on in the truck,
they're watching you.
If you’re tired, you can’t stop and take
a nap.
If you hit a road construction, a snow storm,
your hours are ticking.
Many of the truckers who protested in DC have
near-perfect safety records after driving
millions of miles over their careers — and
they’re doubtful that a device that tells
them how to structure their days will make
them any safer.
A 2014 report by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration found that drivers who
used ELDs had an 11.7 percent reduction in
total crash rate and a 5.1 percent reduction
in preventable crash rate.
But since only a limited group of drivers
were using ELDs when the study was conducted,
it’s hard to know how representative those
safety numbers are.
A 2016 report by a committee of the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
stated that there simply isn’t enough data
on fatigue-related crash rates more broadly—
and argued that further research is needed
before changing the law that sets drive time
limits..
We’re not computers — we don’t have
an off button.
The thing this does do, is it forces you to
get up and go if you’re tired, it forces
you to get up and go if you don’t feel good.
You do not have the choice with this machine
to drive like we used to, and it’s not about
running 24 hours a day, it’s about making
a common sense decision about how you feel,
how the road conditions are, whether or not
you want to run through rush hour, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera.
One of the core complaints about ELDs is that
they don’t understand a trucker’s body
or the context — a trucker could be totally
alert and just 20 minutes away from home,
but legally required to stop for 10 hours
if they ran out of driving time.
But ironically, there’s now a growing market
of technologies designed to more accurately
diagnose fatigue — and they are much more
intrusive than ELDs.
A company called SmartCap makes hats that
measure brain waves and gives you a fatigue
rating.
Another called Seeing Machines uses computer
vision to watch a driver’s eyelids.
And in 2020 Mercedes plans to release a vest
that can detect a driver heart attack and
stop the truck.
Plenty of industries watch their employees
quite closely — but trucking is unique because
a truck is both a workplace and a home.
Trucks are such personal spaces — because
of the length of time drivers are in them,
like some drivers drive with their families,
they drive with their dogs, they have a bed
there, they eat their meals there.
It is a different sort of workplace than a
convenience store that you go to and then
you go home.
Like it is your home for for a period of time.
And so privacy invasions in that context I
think are felt in a more acute way than they
might be in some other industries.
It’s hard to see intrusive technologies
slowing down in trucking.
Services like Amazon Prime have made us accustomed
to getting deliveries incredibly fast, and
there’s increasing consumer demand for package
location tracking.
All of that requires truckers to work incredibly
fast while being monitored very closely.
Ain’t that funny?
I can drive around all I want in this pickup.
Soon as I get up in that rig, now I’m somebody’s
doggone prisoner in a box, I’m not a responsible
individual.
Didn’t matter that I served this country,
who gives a s**t.
I ain’t nothin’.
I’m just a trucker, that’s all I am.
Just a trucker, just a d****ss trucker.
It’s interesting because, of course, surveillance
has been part of the workplace since the inception
of work.
But at the same time it’s a change that’s
occurred in a very large scale form, because
of the capabilities of the new technologies.
There’s a scene from the 1936 movie “Modern
Times” where Charlie Chaplin’s character
takes a bathroom break from his assembly line
job.
But it doesn’t take long for a video monitor
to appear onscreen.
Hey!
Quit stalling, get back to work!
Within the transportation industry, improvements
in technology have turned parodies like this
into reality.
Oftentimes it is a source of tremendous stress,
and it's one of those stressors that doesn't
just go away.
People don't just get used to the fact that
they are being observed 24/7.
We get really excited about technology holding
the promise for solving social and economic
problems, and, it’s like, it almost universally
doesn't.
Or it just moves the problem a little bit.
And the reason for that is when you have a
problem with deeper roots than than technology,
a technology ends up being like a bandaid.
When you get out and meet actual truckers,
they don’t want to have to drive excessive
hours or put anyone in danger on the road.
But they do want people to understand that
they get their jobs done in different ways
— and surveillance technology doesn’t
always account for that.
We are actually fighting for the safety of
everyone that’s on the highways, everybody
that’s on the roads.
We’re not fighting just to run outlaw style.
Outlaw’s gone.
We’re the American truckers, and we’re
here to provide everybody and keep everybody
safe.
I think the issue here is that there's a technical
solution being brought to bear on a problem
that is not technical.
The problem here is that drivers are overworked,
and they're not paid for all their work.
They’re severely underpaid.
Trying to solve that with a technical solution
feels, to me, incomplete.
So, it's like putting the onus for that problem
on the people who are most affected by it,
who have the least power to change anything.
