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Truck driver wonders if cheating led to Humboldt crash

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CALGARY (NEWS 1130) – His first reaction after hearing about the Humboldt bus crash — did the driver cheat his electronic logs?

The logs ensure drivers only work the legal amount of hours and get the legal amount of rest time.

But a truck driver, who has asked to remain anonymous, says there are ways to cheat and there’s pressure from employers to do it.

He’s been in the business for nearly 20 years and explains, under previous employers, he’s been indirectly forced to work through breaks.

“On an electronic log you can’t log without taking your breaks because the GPS knows when the vehicle is moving. Like on an electronic log, when you’re working in the patch or you’re doing any sort of job where it’s not just straight driving, which is a lot of us, you just press a button, truck doesn’t move for half an hour or 15 minutes or whatever, it says you took a break whether you took the break or not,” he said.

“They can’t directly ask you to do it but they just put like passive aggressive pressure on you. So, I just told him ‘ok, well I’m over my hours what can I do?’ And he explained to me how to cheat the electronic log.”

He said refusing can put drivers’ livelihood at risk.

“The law says that I’m allowed to refuse unsafe work, driving illegal is unsafe work, but if you refuse that unsafe work most likely you’re getting fired,” and he said he has been fired in the past for speaking up and has reported the problem to Alberta Transportation. The company he had been working for wasn’t caught though. He explains that’s because the cheated electronic logs don’t show any errors making cheating almost impossible to detect.

There’s also pressure from other drivers, and he said it feeds a toxic culture within the industry.

“There are people who everyone knows who can survive on four hours of sleep, I don’t know how they do it but they do they seem to function just fine, right, but then those people push everyone else. So, you get a culture within the drivers themselves where it’s like ‘well, I’m not going to make any money if we all have to log honestly.’”

Alberta Transportation responded in an emailed statement:

“The Government of Alberta expects all commercial carriers to obey all federal and provincial regulations that govern their operations. Alberta Transportation has systems in place to oversee commercial carriers and ensure they are operating appropriately. Whenever a commercial carrier is audited it must provide verification of hours of service logs using supporting documents. We are continually looking at ways to improve our systems and will inform Albertans and commercial carrier stakeholders of any changes made to existing systems or regulations.”

As for the driver, he says he’s happy to be working for his current employer that follows the rules.

“I’m even more happy to finally be with a company that respects the law and understands that it costs a lot more to settle with 20 people that you killed.”

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