The Source for Trucking News, Opinions and Trucking Jobs | Trucker in deadly Amtrak crash guilty of logbook violations

Your log book can send you to jail. Why keep taking that chance? If blackboxes were cheap and dependable there wouldn’t be a question. They don’t need black boxes to find out you’ve been lying.

Northwest Indiana News: nwitimes.com – News: Trucker in deadly Amtrak crash guilty of logbook violations

KANKAKEE (AP) — The truck driver involved in a deadly 1999 Amtrak derailment near Bourbonnais was convicted Wednesday of violating driving time limits and logbook rules — the only criminal charges he faced in the crash that killed 11 people.

The crash also injured 122 others aboard Amtrak’s “City of New Orleans” and pushed federal officials to overhaul truckers’ hours-of-service rules for the first time since 1939.

I wonder if that’s really true. Out of all the crashes and logbook violations since 1939, this was the one that persuaded the change?

Federal investigators also said Stokes had had just three to five hours of sleep in the 38 hours before the accident; federal rules at the time required an eight-hour break after 10 hours of driving.

Wonder if running that hard was worth it.

Stokes was found guilty by Circuit Judge Clark Erickson of a willful violation of the maximum time limit for commercial truckers and willfully violating laws requiring him to keep an accurate logbook, said Assistant Attorney General Bill Elward, who prosecuted the case.

Both charges are felonies, and Stokes faces a possible prison term of one to three years at his sentencing Sept. 22, Elward said.

FELONIES. 1 to 3 years in JAIL. And that’s just for the logbook. They are going to decide the rest later.

In closing arguments to the judge last week, Sacks said because Stokes’ speed and exact mileage weren’t known it couldn’t be determined how long Stokes was actually driving on the day of the crash. Stokes also believed he would have the chance to update his logbook later, Sacks argued.

Enforcing those rules has never been easy because inspectors rely on the logbooks that truck drivers fill out themselves.

Can you say Black Box?

In Stokes’ case, when the Federal Highway Administration investigated his logbook, it found four other incidents in the two months immediately preceding the crash in which Stokes had recorded that he was either off-duty or sleeping at the same time company records showed he was picking up and hauling steel.

And what’s bad is that everyone does their logbook like that. That’s what the new 14 hour rule was suppose to try and fix. Granted it wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. We (usually) don’t get paid for that loading and unloading. If we don’t get paid for it, why cause it to interfer with the part that we do get paid for? That’s what has to be fixed, first and foremost. The driving / resting crap isn’t all that important. Fix the reason why we’re tired to begin with. Fix the problem of us working all day and having to log it like we’re sleeping, then we drive all night. I’ve said it before. Companies not only know about it, they depend on it.

I may be wrong about black boxes, but unless they come up with a way to know if we’re really in the sleeper or on the dock, they’re not going to help this problem. They could be a start and they could weed out the drivers and companies that have more than one logbook and drive like maniacs because they think that the faster they drive the more money they make. Something has to be done about us being taken advantage of as free labor and us being stupid enough to not only do it, but log it like we’re sleeping. I’m hoping that higher rates and charges to shippers for detention will help.