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BACK
in the 1972, there was the Oil Shock when
the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) jacked up the price of
oil in an openly acknowledged cartel, after
refusing a drastic reduction in the buyers'
price imposed by the Seven Sisters, the
cartel of the oil majors.
In
response, the US government implemented
a 55 mile per hour speed limit (90 kph).
Opinion leaders, feeling groovy in command
of high media posts, joined the universal
Simon and Garfunkel chorus: "Slow down,
you move too fast. You got to make the morning
last."
It
was the start of crazes that continue today
into global warming, now better known as
ill-defined "climate change" because
the world has not warmed in 15 years and
the Arctic has just had shortest summer
on record.
More
relevant to transport is the new Hours of
Work legislation that has largely survived
a court challenge by the American Trucking
Association (ATA), only receiving a slight
trimming a superfluous rest period, which
regulators required for short-haul drivers.
Hours
of work in any industry is divisive because
workers want more money for less work and
are in unions dedicated to providing just
that to the point where the International
Longshoremen's Union has won the right to
be paid for jobs they don't even have to
show up for, much less do.
But
let us not forget that this case was not
about making a kinder and gentler world
for truckers; it was about safety, or so
they said. That's why, or supposedly why,
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
limited the hours of work.
The
ATA challenged the regulations in the US
Appeals Court, pointing out that driving
had become much safer that there was no
scientific backing the regulations, only
the notion that if drivers got more rest
there would be fewer accidents.
Increasingly,
there is a trend today, that improvement
in a rate of air pollution or reduction
in road accidents is not enough. Regulators,
pressed by state funded nuisance lobbies,
are mindless of how regulations disimprove
a related situation.
Often
laws conceived to serve one purpose are
conscripted to serve unrelated social engineering
projects, from getting Al Capone for tax
evasion, ostensibly to ensure the state's
revenue, though really because he was a
murderous gangster, to raising tobacco taxes,
first conceived to raise revenue, but increasingly
used to do the opposite, reducing tobacco
use and raising less revenue.
An
example of such unintended consequences
one need only look at the facts in the trucking
case. The hours a truck driver may spend
behind the wheel per day or work per week
are basic building blocks of any supply
chain. Shortening those hours can only cut
into a truck driver's earnings, but make
delivering goods on time while maintaining
lean inventories even more difficult for
motor carriers and costly for shippers.
Changes
to the US hours-of-service rules for truck
drivers that took effect July 1 certainly
reduce weekly driving time for some truckers,
especially long-haul tractor-trailer operators.
Although truckers will still be able to
drive 11 hours and work 14 hours per day,
their ability to use a 34-hour restart will
be restricted.
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