Hatchet job

Ronald Piper wasn’t done working Monday when he saw the headline that once again perpetuated myths about “medically unfit” truck drivers supposedly driving up numbers of highway crashes.

By now you’ve seen the headlines and every television news station’s version of the story on the GAO’s study of an untold number CDL holders having medical disabilities. Untold is the correct figure, since the study never claims to show how many CDL holders may be physically unfit to be behind the wheel, nor did it claim to define how many crashes were caused by truck drivers at all.

Land Line’s Special Report is available here, and the GAO study itself can be viewed by clicking here.

Ronald correctly pointed out the GAO study didn’t assign blame for wrecks among 15 specific cases highlighted by the GAO – Congress’ investigative arm. The 15 cases only identified that a driver with a certain medical issue was involved.

Unfortunately, a media power known as The Associated Press published a story about the GAO report that mislead readers, newspaper editors and TV news managers around the world into incorrectly believing that the report blamed truckers for more fatalities and said that the wrecks were directly related to medical fitness.

The Associated Press, despite suffering its own job slashes in recent years, continues to grow in influence because of accelerated job cuts at newspapers and television stations throughout the country.

I personally believe The AP does some great reporting. It’s too bad the GAO story became a case study in the power of a single bad story.

Here’s a list of bad headlines associated with the story, put together by our Copy Editor Elizabeth Andersen. The headlines shed no light on the GAO’s report, but instead perpetuate bad stereotypes about truck drivers in general.

• “Unhealthy truckers levy toll on lives” – Tampa Tribune
• “Drivers truckin’ despite disabilities” – Connecticut Post (Can you hear Smoky and the Bandit in the background?)
• “Study reveals truck drivers threat” – KOMU-TV (Heavens, prepare for a new anti-terrorism Cabinet post to deal with truckers alone)
• “Study: Ill truckers behind wrecks” – Time Magazine (Simply incorrect, because the cause of the wrecks hasn’t been declared)
• “Trucks, buses too big to fail when it comes to safety” – Advertiser-Tribune, Tiffin, OH (Apparently barges, alien aircraft and Geo Metros are OK to fail)
• “Be warned: Some truckers prone to unconsciousness” – Waco Tribune (Something tells me the phrase “Be warned” has been used a lot in Waco Tribune headlines since the early 1990s)
• “Legions of sick truckers on the road” – from legions of local television stations

And Elizabeth’s favorite:

• “Medically unfit truckers roam the highways and authorities know it” – eFluxMedia (Enough said).

And one day later, a slew of editorials gave a tongue lashing to commercial drivers and government officials. The Tiffin, OH, Advertiser-Tribune accused administrators and legislators of being hamstrung by the trucking industry, which may be “too important to regulate.”

To be fair, some news outlets put the GAO story in some sort of perspective, and may have whittled it down to meet space or truthiness standards.

But, like the general public remembering one unsafe truck barreling down the highway after 1,000 safe ones, truck drivers won’t forget the batch of knee-jerk negative news following the GAO report.

“We’re the mean, nasty truck drivers,” Ronald said sarcastically, repeating the stereotype he’s fought his entire career.

After a few minutes, Ronald had to go. He had to put aside his frustration from another hatchet job about his profession.

He had a job to do.

A pox on flacks’ flak

When is a billboard like spam e-mail? When it exploits suffering, danger and valor to make a cheap political point.

There probably isn’t a person in America who hasn’t received a slew of frantic e-mails claiming that the message is something that you won’t see in the mainstream media. Usually they come from someone you know, with the message buried under a ton of forwards as people blindly obeyed the direction to “send this to everyone you know.”

A lot of these e-mails deal with this or that political candidate’s supposedly secret pasts, or plans for our future. Trashing a politician’s reputation – a contradictory phrase – is an art form. I figure they can defend themselves or not, as they choose.

But what has come to bother me in recent months has been the many, many e-mails about our military and their often-impossible task of trying to fight the bad guys while not alienating the people they hope to help – or the folks back home.

What I see in these and similar messages is not just some kind of “Wake Up, America!” prophesying. If the emails contained just the story, with a phrase like, “I thought you would find this story interesting, moving, inspiring, etc.” – I’d give them a pass on that.

Instead, what I see is someone’s calculated exploitation of heroism and sacrifice. That bit about “you won’t see this on CBS or in the New York Times [so I will show it to you]” smacks less of patriotism than a pathetic need to stand in the light of someone else’s glory.

I concede that sometimes the e-mails are right; few if any of the mainstream media have picked up a given story. Often, they’re wrong. Whoever originated – or later on tinkered with – the e-mail to include their own claim to fame was either too sure of their own inbred prejudices to actually check or, more likely, didn’t care if they were wrong.

They had a point to make, a need to feel like they were important and had counted coup against the machine. They’d waved a finger at the establishment. They didn’t actually bother to do something possibly more productive – to write to CBS or the Times, “Hey, doofus – whatsa matter with you? This is a great story, and you didn’t cover it. No wonder nobody watches/reads you anymore.”

A friend sent me such an e-mail recently, and I responded – in much fewer words – to the effect of what I’ve posted here. It was late and I was tired, and I reacted like Howard Beale in “Network”

I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore – like this billboard.

Just one of the guys

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man.”

Those powerful words captivated me as a youngster as I perched in front of the TV to watch Lee Majors portray “The Six Million Dollar Man.” I still have a themed board game somewhere.

Somewhere along the line, the fictional scientists in the show got together and decided that rebuilding Steve Austin would cost $6 million, but how might their estimate stack up today?

If you’ve been following reports about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency placing statistical value on human life, then you’ll know that $6 million is not enough to buy you a nuclear-powered bionic man in 2008. It would barely pay for a middle-aged school teacher from Rhode Island.

EPA officials have placed the value on a single human life at $6.9 million – something they do when calculating the environmental impacts of policies and regulations.

But just five years ago, the EPA’s value on human life was $7.8 million per person. We’re all of a sudden $900,000 – or 13 percent – cheaper now than we were five years ago. If the value drops any more, we’ll all be $6 million people but without the bionic eye or the super strength.

While politicians and others continue to pontificate about the recent drop in value, all I know is that Steve Austin doesn’t seem so special anymore. He’s just one of the guys.

Preventive maintenance

I recently had some foot surgery that meant spending several weeks at home, with my foot in the air when I wasn’t hobbling around on crutches. Aside from getting a new handle – “Flat Tire” – from my editor, Jami Jones, and being asked if I had finally learned how to “double crutch,” the experience has given me time to ponder how many limping truckers I have seen. And sympathize with their discomfort and pain as they trek onward, getting the job done.

Why are so many drivers hobbled? Jumping – or falling – off rigs and trailers probably causes a lot of lameness. Over the years, it wears down the ankles and knees, and arthritis sets in. They’ve got torn or shredded tendons, ligaments and cartilage from falls and slips and overuse. Twisted ankles that never healed enough, even fractures that bore weight too soon.

Age and weight contribute their share of misery, as does lack of exercise. Can’t do much about age, but taking off pounds relieves the burden on joints, and even daily stretching can help limber up muscles and joints.

Not that it is ever easy to find a place to limber up, and I am not comfortable preaching to the contrary. Truck parking lots can be sketchy any time of the day, and especially at night and early mornings. Also, it’s hard to feel like you’re doing something healthy standing between two trailers with reefer exhaust blowing around you – and other truckers staring at you.

Still, if there’s room in your sleeper, try a few simple stretches, maybe some leg lifts in the rack. If you have to re-tarp or check a load, do a few leans and quarter-squats before you start to unkink muscles that have been sitting for hours. Knock off a few pounds and take a walk when you’re home.

Like they say, life’s a journey, so take it one step at a time.

So DOT, you wanna play word games?

Word games and politics seem to go hand-in-hand anymore.

It’s become one of the favorite pastimes it seems since Bill Clinton uttered the words: “It all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

It’s frustrating, to say the least, to watch politicians bat around the meaning of words, trying to twist and turn them to their advantage.

The most recent word game haunting the trucking industry is the Department of Transportation’s attempt to keep the Mexican cross-border program going.

The program is still going on because the DOT’s crack legal team played word games with an amendment written by Sen. Byron Dorgan that cut off funding to the program. The legal eagles took the most narrow interpretation of the word “establish.”

The DOT attorneys contend that since the program was already going before the legislation cutting off the funding was approved, the program was “established” and the legislation was meaningless.

Dorgan wasn’t happy at all at this shenanigan. Hearings were held. Letters were fired off. But the DOT just kept right on moving. A court is sorting out that mess now.

Obviously Dorgan doesn’t easily forget, and it’s time for another transportation appropriations bill.

Guess what – Dorgan has another amendment in there that could cut off funding to the program if it’s signed into law. Only this time, if the DOT wants to play word games, they’re going to have their hands full.

Dorgan’s amendment says the DOT will not spend money to:

• establish,

• implement,

• continue,

• promote,

• or in any way permit a cross-border program.

Oh yeah, the end of the amendment also tells the DOT that if there is a program currently ongoing, it’s over, too.

Given the lengths that Congress is having to go to to put an end to this program makes me appreciate my ability as a mother to end debates like this. All I have to do is say: “Because I said so.”

Come to think of it, maybe that’s just what Dorgan was thinking when he wrote the amendment this time.

The BS with BMI measurements

There’s something about an automatic fitness judge that doesn’t sit right with me.

How can humans put together in a variety of shapes, sizes with varying amounts of bone and muscle density be classified by a standard measuring only total height and weight?

Most truckers probably have heard by now that FMCSA’s Medical Review Board recommended that all commercial truck drivers with a body mass index of 30 or greater be subjected to one or two night sleep studies – a process that costs thousands of dollars and would mandate billions in revenue for sleep study labs.

Aside from recycled research used to justify the recommendation, the Medical Review Board relied on a BMI standard that fails to consider many things.

A colleague recently let me borrow her Nintendo Wii game console, and an accompanying game called Wii Fit, which uses a balance board to weigh your weight, balance, fitness and general competence as a human.

OK, that last part may be a bit of a stretch, but you get the point.

I logged in to check my fitness, and after entering some height and age information, was put in my place by a cartoonish avatar.

“You’re overweight,” the high-pitched voice chirped out.

I’d feign surprise here, but the truth is I’ve been skeptical of the height/weight standard for some time. I’ve run my numbers on multiple online BMI calculators and haven’t yet made it down to a BMI of 25, even though I run 20 to 25 miles a week and have completed some distance races, including a marathon.

But maybe there’s a way to make this BMI thing work for the general public.

Jazz fans may be familiar with the tale of Bennie Moten, a Kansas City bandleader who died the day after he went carousing with his surgeon. Moten died the next morning during surgery after the still-staggering surgeon friend accidentally cut him and caused Moten to lose large amounts of blood.

Maybe one day the American Medical Association will endorse a new standard to benefit patients. They’ll hold surgeons, who we trust with scalpels and our bodies, to a BMI limit of 30.

That way, we’ll know they are less likely to have apnea, and probably have slept excellently the night before.

Therefore, they’re much less likely to sleepily nick an artery or leave a pair of scissors near your ribcage.

Because we’re all about safety, right?

Easy isn’t always cheap

Land Line keeps a close eye on tolling and so should you, especially if you have a transponder and an account to pay your tolls electronically.

News stories continue to surface about customers being overcharged or penalized because of a glitch, an expired account or some other problem related to technology or an electronic account.

Penalties and fines are in place to prevent people from cheating the system but sometimes those penalties are wrongly assessed or exorbitant. It pays to check your books to make sure you’re not being overcharged.

I recently touched base with a California attorney, Anat Levy, who filed a lawsuit in early 2007 against the Orange County Transportation Authority. A group of motorists suing the Authority say they were charged exorbitant penalties for racking up so-called violations on the 91 Express Lanes toll road.

One family involved in the case was assessed $43,638 in penalties after incurring just $140.68 in unpaid tolls on an expired transponder account. They had been using the toll road to drive their daughter to cancer treatments in 2005. The case is ongoing with a hearing scheduled for later this summer, Levy says.

Electronic tolling continues to gain in popularity as a way for a roadway operator to cut costs.

Take some time to balance your books and keep your electronic accounts paid up to avoid getting in a mess. In most cases we’ve read about in recent months, tolling authorities will work with customers at resolving issues. If that doesn’t work, there’s a legal system in place.