Dummy-Proofed Trucking

If I had a dollar for every time my car beeps at me for doing something it thinks I shouldn’t, I’d be rich! You see, the way Southern backroads are built, you can take a curve much smoother when you use both lanes to keep driving as straight as possible, as long as no one is coming, of course. But when I do this, my car starts beeping and tells me to “Take a rest.” I don’t need a rest! I pay taxes, and I can use the whole road! How about you stop telling me what to do!

And every time this happens, once I’m finished yelling at my car, I think about the truck drivers, the technology inside and out of modern trucks, and try to imagine, as best as I can, dealing with ‘something’ telling me what to do all day, every day. My car beeping at me is annoying, yes, but the professional truck driver lives with the machine governing his decisions every day, and it never lets up.

Man is designed to work, and his sense of purpose is tied directly to his ability to provide, to complete a task through his own effort, and to exercise real judgment over outcomes for which he is accountable. A man looks at the world around him and knows that his own decisions shaped it. When we take responsibility away from an adult, even gradually and even with seemingly good intentions, we reduce his human agency. When we implement a new ‘thing’ to be “more efficient” or “improve safety,” we often remove an aspect of the driver’s job that makes his work his.

Every year we see more technology, more regulations, more algorithms designed to, or said to, make ‘something’ better. Lane departure warnings and automatic brake systems are meant to save lives. Electronic logging devices are meant to prevent fatigue-related crashes. Optimized routing is meant to cut wasted fuel and wasted time. But what happens when we stack enough of these systems on top of the professional truck driver?

At a certain point, we have quietly relieved him of nearly every decision that once defined his profession. He no longer decides which route to take, or which truck stop to fuel at, or how long to drive before resting, or at what speed he will drive. What we have left is a man sitting in the cab, legally responsible for an 80,000lb+ vehicle, while nearly every decision about how that vehicle moves across the country has already been made somewhere else, by someone else, or by something else.

When automated systems assume the responsibility of making moment-to-moment decisions, human agency begins to erode. The human operator drifts from an active decision-maker to a passive supervisor, someone who watches the system run and steps in only after something has gone wrong. And when something does go wrong, then who is responsible when the routing software sends a truck into a bridge it cannot clear? Who is responsible when an automated braking system misreads a hazard? Who is responsible when the hours of service math forces a driver to stop somewhere unsafe because the clock ran out, regardless of what conditions on the road actually demanded? Is it the computer? Is it the automation? Or is it still, somehow, the man who technically drove the truck, but had almost nothing left to decide?

The erosion of responsibility is eating away at the profession, and at the culture of American trucking. We’ve introduced technologies and lowered the barrier to entry, but how low can we possibly go?! We have built parameters into systems that “dummy proof” the processes and the actions. And once it’s “dummy proof,” it doesn’t really matter who we hire. I’d argue that we’ve effectively killed the culture of American trucking by turning it into a job that seemingly anyone can do. Over time, a respected trade rooted in wisdom and judgment honed over years on the highway is reduced to commodity labor, and the truck driver is rendered almost irrelevant, serving as little more than a legal requirement to sit in the cab.

A man’s work ought never to be downgraded to mere passive surveillance of his environment. Human beings are designed to act as true agents in the world, rather than idle observers governed by systems engineered to circumvent their personal judgment. How can we hold drivers responsible when we have removed everything for which they should be responsible? When we strip the professional driver of all decisions, we are left holding a man accountable for decisions that were never really his to make, and for some reason we’re calling it “progress.”

My car beeping at me around a curve on a back road is such a small thing, and I can yell back at it and move on with my day. For a truck driver, it isn’t a small thing. He doesn’t get to yell and move on. His hours, routes, fuel stops, speed, and everything else are decided for him by someone or something else, every day, for as long as he holds that job. And he still has to answer for whatever happens next.

If we want drivers who are genuinely responsible, we have to leave them something real to be responsible for.