Will modern tech fall by the wayside like CB radios?

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Utah-based Deseret Transportation’s fleet of less than 50 trucks still uses CB radios, finding them especially useful going over Donner Pass in a snowstorm, or when starting up the canyon from Laramie toward Sherman, Wyoming.

CB radios, though around since the '40s, became popular in the '70s when Hollywood produced films glorifying the truck driver. Truckers used them to warn each other of traffic jams, “bears” a.k.a. police ahead, and which scales were open/closed, among other things.

Now, all that information is shared with drivers through tablets on their dashboards, and though CBs aren’t yet considered a relic of the past, their use has fallen by the wayside.

“A lot of large fleets actively discourage drivers from having CB radios or using them. In fact, they don't even install them anymore because they think they're a distraction,” said Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics.

Many drivers still see the CB as a safety tool, sharing traffic reports (and bear reports), nearly 50 years after Burt Reynolds made it trendy. 

But will the modern technology filling cabs today eventually be deemed a distraction and no longer installed? While that may be the fate of certain types of newer safety tech, many of today’s systems are likely permanent, Croke said, due to liability.

“Accident prevention has never been more important given the rising costs of claims and adverse claims development due to rising medical costs and nuclear verdicts,” he said.

Modern day distractions

There’s a meme that circulates across social media that says, “When you turn the radio down to see better.” While it may elicit a chuckle, there’s truth to it. Data from Nauto, an AI software for driver and fleet safety, shows that something as simple as having a conversation can be more distracting than you’d think because it takes cognitive focus away from the road.

Nine people are killed‬ every day in distracted driving incidents across the United States. In 2022, there were‬ 290,000 crashes involving distracted drivers, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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Nauto CEO Stefan Heck said looking away from the road is the No. 1 safety hazard by far, and it is dramatically underreported.

“Definitely CB radios is one, but I would not flag that as the worst,” Heck said. “We see people eating food. We see people falling asleep, being drowsy. We see people talking to others in the cab. We see a lot of people tuning the radio, looking at tablets, [and] sometimes looking at maps. We see people filling out paperwork.

“But there is one thing that stands out above all as the really big danger, and that is cell phones,” he said.

Many safety technologies on the market give drivers an audible alert drivers when it detects unsafe behavior like speeding, hard braking, drowsiness, etc., and Heck said whether that technology is helpful or harmful depends on the type of alert.

“Anything that pops up visually, if it's not on your dashboard really close to where your eyes are on the road, I think is a bad idea,” he said. “Audio alerts in general have been fine.”

But there are caveats to audible alerts.

Heck said drivers are distracted unnecessarily when alerted to generic/potential risk versus actual risk – alerting that there tends to be pedestrians ahead rather than stating there are actually pedestrians ahead, for example. The other is a generic beep.

“If it's all beeping and the driver doesn't really know what he's getting beeped at for, that can be distracting,” Heck said. “It can also cause them to tune out any kind of alerts, and that's always negative. When drivers hate the intervention, they tend to ignore it, or they tend to tamper with the system, both of which are bad.”

Nauto uses what it calls earcons – a play on icons found on a computer or phone screen. Earcons are sound patterns that make a suggestion. For example, if a driver is speeding, the pattern imitates slowing down. Heck said it’s effective because it’s short, there’s no guessing what it means, and it doesn’t take the driver’s attention off the road.

For more complex things, Nauto uses voice commands with positive direction. For example, “Pull over to use your phone” if the system recognizes that the driver is holding their phone.

Heck said haptic alerts where the driver’s seat or steering wheel vibrates, are also effective ways to bring the driver’s attention back to the road.

The future of alerts

Though not yet in commercial trucks, some of the latest passenger cars have visual alert systems integrated into the windshield where it, for example, highlights a pedestrian in your path, drawing the driver’s attention to the danger as opposed to taking their eyes away from the danger to a screen.

Heck said that is the only visual safety system he could get on board with.

Deseret Transportation Fleet Manager Steven Roberts said he has drivers complain about certain alerts in their safety system because “they say all the noises distract them from focusing on the road.” He said it can be annoying, especially when there are false positives. Though the systems aren’t perfect, he said they are pretty good.

Heck said he expects the systems that often have false positives or those that have generic alerts will be phased out, or at least fall out of popularity like the CB.

Croke, a big supporter of CB radios as a safety device, said he is also a huge fan of any driver assistance technology.

“Regardless of driver tenure and experience, these types of alerting systems save lives,” Croke said. “More broadly, as driver demographics change and experienced drivers leave the industry – I'm thinking of the Baby Boomer generation here– the need for technology to assist new drivers is going to increase.”

Angel Coker Jones is a senior editor of Commercial Carrier Journal, covering the technology, safety and business segments. In her free time, she enjoys hiking and kayaking, horseback riding, foraging for medicinal plants and napping. She also enjoys traveling to new places to try local food, beer and wine. Reach her at [email protected].

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