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Why Total Driving Hour Should be Capped for Cargo Trucks
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Why Total Driving Hour Should be Capped for Cargo Trucks
The controversy over truck transportation market persists.
The biggest one is about freight rates.
Some drivers work for long time without rest in order to make up with the low freight rates.
Naturally, long-hour work has a negative influence on safe driving.
This increases the likelihood of drowsy driving due to overwork.
In fact, 50% of the fatal incidents on highway are related with trucks and the analysis suggests most of these are due to drowsy driving.
Shall we explore how much truck drivers actually overwork and what measures should be needed to prevent the driving without sufficient rest?
How long do truck drivers drive?
The average monthly driving time of the surveyed truck was found to be 122.4 hours.
The time spent purely driving the vehicle averaged 4.1 hours per day, and when combining the non-driving time, which averages 4.5 hours per day for freight loading and unloading, the truck driver's total working time amounts to an average of 8.6 hours per day.
But when you calculate the time only for top 5% of drivers who drive long hours, the result is completely different. Their driving time averages 240.4 hours per month, 60.1 hours per week, and 8 hours per day.
When it comes to driving hours only, it is higher than the average by two times and the working hours increases up to 12.5 hours per day.
According to the analysis, the number of these drivers is 2,020 on the assumption that there is no shift.
How long distance does a truck driver drive?
In case of a truck of a driver who works for more than 16 days per month, the average monthly driving distance was found to be 6,179km.
It equals to 1,545km per week, or about 206 km per day.
However, the driving distance of the top 5% of drivers, previously arranged by driving time, increases up to 12,927km per month, 3,232km per week, or 431km per day.
Similar to driving time, it's more than double that.
In some cases, drivers are found to drive more than 1,000 kilometers in a single day.
How long does a truck driver take a rest for work?
The average bouts of 4-hour-or-longer break for top 5% of drivers in driving time was found to be 27.5 per month, 6.9 per week, or 0.9 per day.
That is, drivers are, in general, found to have one bout of 4-hour-or-longer break per day.
However, the number of breaks over 8 hours doesn't seem good enough.
It is 16 per month, 4 per week, or 0.5 per day.
It means drivers have one break of 8 hours or longer every other day only. This suggests that there are great number of truck drivers who work with short cat nap.
In addition, the number of vehicles at the bottom 10% of non-driving hours takes up 65% of all registered vehicles in metropolitan area including Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi and more.
Given the 46.8% of register rate in metropolitan area among entire vehicles, the number of vehicles without sufficient break is likely to be crowded in the area.
As a result of the analysis on tachographs of commercial trucks, most drivers seem to have sufficient break time for driving.
It is, however, estimated that the number of drivers whose daily working hour is over 12.5 hours take up 3.4% of entire commercial truck drivers, which means the proportion of drivers with high risk of drowsy driving due to overwork equals that percentage.
Although these drivers normally travel within metropolitan area such as capital area, some are long-range drivers driving between Seoul and Busan etc.
As the number of overworked commercial freight truck drivers increases, road traffic safety is inevitably put at greater risk.
However, should only drivers be blamed for the overdriving?
Of course, as a commercial truck driver, they should have driven when they are not fatigued.
However, it is difficult to blame the drivers alone if they are in the context where too much competition is driving fares down, forcing them to work more to make ends meet.
A total working hour limit system is necessary in our country as well.
Our country has already made all commercial trucks mandatorily equipped with tachographs.
That is, the condition for driving hour limit system is also ready for implement.
However, the short-term profit could be dwindled due to the working hour limit system.
In conclusion, it could not be that easy to determine the total driving time limit for trucks.
Perhaps shippers, carriers, and others in the freight market can come together to determine the right amount of total working hours.
And then, we will be able to reduce the loss of lives on the road.
* This card news is produced by modifying and supplementing ‘KOTI Logistics Brief Vol.14 No.3’.