To your specific points, the company and drivers' interests usually aren't in lockstep.
Unfortunately, the company usually has the power. Correct me if I'm wrong on some of the details here.
But when a driver's in another city and picks up a trailer that's been overloaded, or one with bad tires or faulty brakes, if they choose to pull it then they're the one that gets nailed with the DOT ticket. Correct?
I know some trucking companies have reimbursement policies, but that seems like a really perverse incentive structure. Why not find out who the driver is contracted to for the load & fine the hell out of them? It's their trailer after all!
My problem isn't that there's regulation. It's that some pieces (like the above, and the absolute cutoff times for logbooks) seems like it was designed by someone who wasn't overly burdened with imagination, empathy, or an inkling of game theory.
(And on the driver-vs-company fines, I'm basing my guess on most of them accruing against the driver by the fact that trucking companies generally seem to be pushing drivers to make the shady choices)
The driver shares responsibility. If a trailer is overloaded and has bald tires and brakes, he shouldn't pick it up. The driver has a strong incentive to tow the line as his CDL is his livelihood, and serious violations can affect that. (In addition to his life.)
The problem is that the carrier may or may not care and most drivers have little leverage. My uncle was a teamster driver. If he showed up to pick up a load and it was overloaded or unsafe, he'd go to the dock master, tell him to get the overload off the trailer and refuse to pick up. If you work for JimBob Trucking from Alabama, you may be on your own.
As for the inflexibility -- you need to be inflexible sometimes. You don't need game theory to state that trucks must have brakes, or that drivers must sleep. The fact is that a human's performance of occupational tasks diminishes as you stay awake. If someone is up for 17 hours, they will perform as if they are drunk.
Agreed that drivers have responsibility for a load they pick up, but my understanding is that with the new eLog systems there's less opportunity for "flex time". So if you arrive at a yard and need to get a container swapped to a new trailer or have them pull a different trailer then you're still on the clock. Which gets dicey when the yard knows this and says "Sure, we'll get you a new trailer. It'll just take a couple hours. We're really busy right now..."
The ideal would be the unionized situation you outlined, where there's a strong, independent driver's advocate to mediate disputes.
And agreed that there's a hard cliff where no one should be allowed to drive. But if it's 11 hours in the seat max, then what if you sat in traffic at a port for 5 of those? Is that driver as tired as someone doing 11 hours of interstate miles?
Paper logs afforded both drivers and regulators a judge-like discretion that I think lubricated the wheels with reasonableness while still dissuading repeated patterns of risky behavior.
eLog (assuming they fix all the loopholes in the terribly implemented first gen systems) doesn't provide that flexibility.
Which, in general, is a problem I think we're going to have to deal with more and more. You can't take partially enforced laws that worked, implement technical measures to absolutely enforce them, and expect everything to be the same as it was before. (E.g. if police departments started sueing for Google Maps tracking data and handing out tickets whenever a speed limit was exceeded)
Here's a link: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-on-sleep-deprivation-20... There's a lot of public military research as well, but without the pretty charts.
Their freedom is restricted because given the choice of pissing off the boss and putting people at risk, drivers and companies often choose the later.
My brother almost got hit by a semi at a weigh station when it took too long too stop -- because only one brake was functioning. He stopped a Chinatown bus venting exhaust into the cabin, also brakes were on fire. Another time they caught a guy who drove straight through from San Diego to Syracuse on amphetemine.
The regulations are there to protect the driving public. Violators are actively policed, and companies who break the rules get shut down.