This post was first published in the August 2017 edition of Truck News
A few weeks ago I was camped out by the side of a lake in
northern Ontario between the towns of Wawa and White River. It’s a peaceful
spot just shy of the half way point between my home terminal in southwestern
Ontario and our companies’ terminal in Winnipeg. It’s peaceful to the point of
not having any cell or data service available. You’re truly off the beaten
technology path when parked here as I discovered when I woke to a flat tire on
my tractor on Sunday morning. I had satellite service to the truck so I was
able to communicate with dispatch and get a tire repair service out to me but
it took a few hours. The funny thing was even the local repair service didn’t
have cell service in this area which was a gentle reminder to me about the
accessibility to our technology infrastructure.
The thing is that we, as truckers, can still choose to turn
everything off if we want to. The world doesn’t end as we know it when we make
that choice. In fact the cost of freedom that comes with life on the open road
has always been ingenuity, independence, and the ability to survive on your own
devices.
There is much discussion at the present moment of the
impending deadline for electronic logging devices in our trucks. One of the key
points in support of not adopting this technology is the negative impact is has
on the driver because it enforces the 14 hour cap on our workday. It’s hard for
people outside the industry to get their heads around that point. Exactly why
would anyone be upset with having their workday limited to 14 hours? The answer
to this of course is simple. Truckers are being forced to work within a set of
rules designed to protect them, ostensibly, while continuing to perform their
daily tasks as they always have done. You can’t just change the rules that affect
daily life without changing the culture that goes along with it. That takes
time.
So waking up to a world that I could not contact through my
ever present hand held device really drove home the point that the future of
being constantly plugged in to the global network is totally dependent on
accessibility to everyone, everywhere. How ironic that accessibility to the
internet and constant contact is a cause of daily stress whether your connected
or not.
But that’s a choice we make not something that is imposed on
us. I constantly see drivers heading down the road with their Bluetooth
headsets on engaged in heated discussion over something or other. Throw the dam
things into the overhead and enjoy the drive. Turn your ELD enabled satellite
service off by killing the volume so you can’t hear it and turning off the
screen so you can’t see it, it will still work behind the scenes while you go
about your day. This is the best way to take back your freedom or at least your
perception of it.
Put your devices in airplane mode, turn off your data or
roaming feature, send your incoming calls to voice mail. Being constantly
connected takes away your sense of freedom it doesn’t imbue it.
There is nothing like driving in parts of the world that
leave you disconnected from everyone and everything. It is a reminder of what
it is to stand alone and the sense of personal independence that comes along
with it.
I spend a good deal of time thinking about how technology,
especially artificial intelligence, is going to change the world for my
grandchildren. I believe we are at a turning point in our social evolution and
how we deal with one another and the world around us. The need to be able to
step away from the hive is one of the keys to our health and well-being. That’s
what waking up to a flat tire served to remind me of.
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