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(1) Speed limits gone. Workers encouraged to drive more recklessly and given tighter deadlines to meet. (2) More truck parking for the same reason. Cities filled with parking lots for truckers to sleep instead of being reasonable distance and deadlines for the routes.
None of this "helps truckers". This helps truck companies exploit their workers more while making the roads less safe and cities covered in more parking lots.
Another proud moment for capitalistic innovation
According to the linked article It also includes changes to mandated rest periods to help ensure truckers are even more sleep deprived than they already are.
I did see one good provision, allowing to split the 14 hours of driving time with a 30-180 minute break in the middle. But encouraging the mandatory 10 hour rest periods to instead be 2 5 hour rest periods will make for very sleep deprived humans operating 40,000lb machines at 70+MPH
It's an ideal conditioning to double down on some self-driving trucks program.
If you was afraid of driving in tesla yourself, now a 16-wheels tesla can drive into you!
Since it's pro-trucker I'm sure it will include:
Pay for waiting at the dock and stuck in traffic rather than just per-mile, and alternative minimum wage rules ensuring that truckers don't end up working for pennies per hour.
Fatigue rules like aviation that account for cumulative fatigue and circadian rhythm.
Limits on that companies can do with trackers, forbidding their use for "productivity management".
That stuff is definitely in there, Right?
From the people who brought you "Let's give ALL the air traffic controllers an incentive to quit immediately and all at once".
FTFY
speed limiters are why trucks take a half hour to pass another truck. saves gas mainly. like any group of drivers, some have no business going 80. much less in a large truck. the wrecks will be worse and more often.
Unless their limiters are not calibrated to the same value, they shouldn't have to pass each other.
Limiters with adaptative cruise should be the way to go IMHO.