This was my reply:
Bill,
After what we have gone through in our case, with no log books ever being obtained from the truck driver — thus no way of determining his hours of service or possible fatigue, I am more convinced than ever that Electronic Logging Devices are essential.
Furthermore, I hope that, in the crafting of the final rule for ELDs, there are appropriate provisions included for consistent monitoring by means of this technology–for both preventive and investigative purposes. I urge you to put particular emphasis on including means for monitoring independent owner operators who might not have an employer looking over their shoulder. And don’t forget to do all in your power to train those in the enforcement and judicial systems to make full use of this technology.
Finally, I hope that this will be a beneficial technology which will be well-received and pave the way for other useful assistive devices, such as driver fatigue monitoring devices. For example, see this article, http://www.academia.edu/4840350/A_Synopsis_Report_On_EYETRACKING_BASED_DRIVER_FATIGUE_MONITORING_AND_WARNING_SYSTEM_Submitted_By :
“The main idea behind this project is to develop a nonintrusive system which can detect fatigue of the driver and issue a timely warning.Since a large number of road accidents occur due to the driver drowsiness, this system will be helpful in preventing many accidents, and consequently save money and reduce personal suffering. This system will monitor the drivers eyes using a camera and by developing an algorithm we can detect symptoms of driver fatigue early enough to avoid an accident. So this project will be helpful in detecting driver fatigue in advance and will gave warning output in form of sound and seat belt vibration whose frequency will vary between 50 to 60 Hz. Moreover the warning will be deactivated manually rather than automatically. For this purpose a de-activation switch will be used to deactivate warning.
Moreover if driver feels drowsy there is possibility of sudden acceleration or deceleration. We can judge this by Plotting a graph in time domain.If all the three input variables show a possibility of fatigue at one moment then a Warning signal is given in form of text or red color circle. This will directly give an indication of drowsiness/fatigue which can be further used as record of driver performance.”
Thank you again for your part in improving safety on the roads. And I look forward to future updates, which I hope will give evidence of the priority you have indicated is being given to this needed improvement in truck safety.
