“I feel like it is inevitable that it is going to happen just because that’s the way of the industry. … To me it only makes sense to have both. If you’re in a court of law and they’ve got your forward-facing camera, and there’s no doubt you maintained your lane, the next question out of the lawyer’s mouth is going to be, ‘What is that driver doing? Why can’t we see what that driver’s doing?'” –Wal-Mart driver Gary Mars to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, about dual road- and in-cab-facing cameras‘ utility as protection tools in today’s litigious environment.
The quote above from Mars comes with reporting from the Arkansas newspaper about Wal-Mart’s move to outfit drivers based out of several locations with various camera systems as the fleet tests their use. The systems include, variously, those triggered to record by road events and the more intrusive continuous-recording variety that have been popping up more and more.
The private fleet’s reached beyond the select terminals it’s outfitting by looking for volunteers to adopt the systems fleetwide, the Gazette reported, with Mars being one such driver. Find the full report via this link.
Speaking of cameras: Nolo contendere for Howard Salmon in following-too-close case
Rest assured, however, that Salmon wasn’t pleading ‘no contest’ to following too close, the charge that was brought by the officer on the scene of his well-publicized and minor run-in with a Toyota Prius on I-24 SB just inside the Georgia line.
By the time he got to the North Georgia jurisdiction for his scheduled bench trial this morning, the prosecutor had seen his dashcam video of the incident and offered a reduction in charge from the safety-serious following too close, which would have come with four points on his license. By about 9:30 a.m. local time Salmon was on his way with no points on his license, the no contest (and thus no admission of guilt) plea to driving “too fast for conditions” and $50 lighter.
“Just a money grab,” in the end, he says, though he felt it was something of a win-win — saved him a lost day, in the end, as going through to trial would have kept him around the court the better part of the day. Saved him, too, the uncertainty with how things might have turned out in a trial, always a question mark, particularly for owner-operators representing themselves in local courts, I’ve found in recent conversations. Stay tuned for a longer story on this subject later in the month and in the January magazine.
Inevitable ELDs/e-logs for owners of pre-2000 trucks?
A lot of discussion under the story from early this week that posed this question, not a lot of it directly related to the question. Nonetheless, as noted in the story, there are two schools of opinion. One comes from those who deal with brokers/shippers on the ground daily (that’s you), the other from prognosticators who believe that once the ELD mandate is in place, a sizable number of shippers will demand their freight move on trucks recording hours electronically, thus forcing owners of pre-2000, ELD-exempt trucks into some kind of electronic hours solution beyond just a logbook app or laptop program.
