No experience necessary

Here’s an open invitation to step inside my mind for a moment.

Wait, where ya’ going? Hold on, it’s not that bad, really. It’s just a glimpse of what I think when I hear people say,

“I’ve been driving 40 years, and that never happened to me, so it must be a self-inflicted problem.”

Hey kids, guess what? I’m 50 years old and never had cancer, but I support finding a cure. Just because I’ve never personally been invaded by the dread disease doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Also, I don’t blame the people who have it for “poor life planning.”

The trucking industry has a parking issue. Plain and simple. It’s not caused by the ELD mandate, it’s exacerbated by it. Parking was an issue long before fairy-magic safety clocks became the mandate.

It’s simple. There are more trucks than there are places to park. Always have been.

No one ever planned for all the trucks to stop at the same time. Implementation of false safety regulations put a spotlight on the issue but did not cause it.

Magic safety clocks and poorly designed hours of service have become the PET scan of trucking. Lawmakers are discovering the cancer of one-size-fits-all regulation, and some of them are acting in an oncological fashion.

Rep. Brian Babin is a perfect example. His amendment to the hours of service can be considered a first treatment to the disease. Alleviating the symptom of a solid clock and having the option to stop it for a three-hour window is a palliative treatment. It will not cure the problem, but it will alleviate some of the nastier side effects, such as a lack of safe parking.

So the next time you decide to pontificate on how something isn’t an issue just because it never happened to you, think of all the people it has happened to. Whether or not the problem is self-inflicted doesn’t really matter. What does matter is curing the disease overall.