We all hate these cameras when we get caught. But we know why they’re there. Just drive up the state’s many gorgeous and winding mountains. Cars break the 75-mile per hour limit – even to turn a curve, or when passing by a construction site.

The National Transportation Safety Board, the bodyguard of America’s transit, has pointed out for decades that high speeds can result in death. Shocker. Here’s one of many studies, in case you want details.

The Daily Show’s Olivia Munn just did a hysterical interview with AZ State Rep Carl Seel about it. He supports SB 1070. (For anyone who hasn’t read the news this year, that’s the controversial law requiring police to arrest anyone who they suspect doesn’t have immigration papers.)

But Seel draws the line with speed cameras. They are the eyes of Big Brother, invading our privacy.

Munn crinkled her brow, “So speeding is probable cause to check immigration status. But speeding is not probable cause to give you a ticket for…speeding?”

Precisely.

Arizona’s hurting for money, so it can’t afford to put cops on the highways to replace the cameras. Hopefully it can afford the stationary that officers use to write up accidents after people have gotten hurt.

Out on the road, and at truck stops, rumors run rampant that the new system will take a lot of truckers off the road. At a recent Commercial Vehicle Safety Administration (CVSA) Road Check in Flagstaff, Arizona, truckers said they heard “hundreds of thousands” of truckers will be taken off the road because of the new system. Tim Crain, an owner-operator from Roadhouse, Illinois, said he has heard rumors the new system will include measurements for neck size that can result in a mandatory sleep apnea test. “The way I look at it, all that stuff affects me,” Crain said. However, he said there are so many rumors about what the system may or may not include, that “some (rumors) I don’t believe till they’re here.”

At the Great West Truck Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, William Bensmiller, an FMCSA deputy administrator for the state of Nevada, gave talks where he went through the basics of CSA 2010 to a crowd of truckers. Bensmiller said he’s been spending much of the year talking to “anybody impacted” – trucking associations, individual carriers and truckers themselves around the state. He said those that follow the rules will be the least impacted by the new system. “For the good drivers, they’re history will reflect that,” he said.

At the end of June, FMCSA administrator Anne Ferro was part of a panel that testified about CSA 2010 in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Joining Ferro on the panel were Steve Keppler of the CVSA, Keith Klein of Transport Corporation of America (which was representing the American Trucking Associations) and Todd Spencer of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

Ferro stated that one of the main goals for the FMCSA is that it must “remove high-risk operators from our roads and highways.” She stated how CSA 2010 will improve the compliance review process, the FMCSA’s main way of inspecting companies that employ commercial drivers, by moving to a more “performance-based approach. ”

Aspects of a new “performance-based approach” were what Klein, representing ATA, took issue with. He brought up statistics of the trucking industry’s “impressive safety record,” including that the “truck-involved fatality rate has decreased 66 percent since 1975.” One of ATA’s main concerns, Klein said, was that the new system will consider “all (Department of Transportation) defined crashes – including those for which the motor carrier could not reasonably be held accountable.” He showed a video to illustrate his point, where a passenger vehicle cut off a truck and crashed into it, causing the truck to break over the median and into oncoming traffic. Under questioning from chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), Ferro said much of the system is still “under review.”

Without even realizing it, our abilities decline once we fail to get our recommended eight hours of sleep. Response times, decision-making, reflexes, mental focus and mood all begin to slide once a human begins building a sleep deficit. All the while, the propensity for risk-taking increases. In short, fatigue and sleep deprivation can put even the most highly trained, qualified and experienced people in an irrational state of mind. As one expert told News21: “It makes them stupid.”

As we examine fatigue in the transportation industry, we’ve found that the NTSB has issued repeated recommendations to regulatory agencies across all sectors, some dating as far back as the early 1970s. These recommendations have largely been ignored.

In aviation, there is rarely, if ever, a single cause for an accident or incident. Often the circumstances are more like the links in a chain. Fatigue’s place in this chain is most often evident when something has gone wrong. It’s the decision or reaction to that first link in the chain where the real trouble can begin for a fatigued flight crew.

It was an element in the Colgan Air crash near Buffalo, New York that killed 50 people in February 2009. And it has been a factor in hundreds of other deaths over the years.

Yet little has been done to protect pilots, traffic controllers and the flying public from the one bad decision, on the one bad day a pilot or controller might have during an otherwise long and unblemished career.

The recommendations are fairly simple: Change the limits of flight and duty times for flight crews so that it takes into account modern research into sleep, fatigue and circadian rhythms.

While we wait for regulatory agencies to change the rules, a pilot is climbing in the cockpit after a fitful night of undiagnosed sleep apnea; or a controller peers into the glass of his scope with a few hours of sleep and a hot cup of coffee.

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If you have a story to tell or want to talk about fatigue or another safety issue related to transportation, contact charlie.litton@news21.com

What is your opinion on doctor shopping or medically unqualified drivers? Any doctors that want to weigh in on this? Know any doctors that examine commercial drivers? We’d love to hear from you.

Front (L to R): Ben Giles, Charlie Litton, Stevie Mathieu, Jenn Brookland, Robin Schwartz, AJ Maclean.

Back (L to R): Ryan Phillips, Tessa Muggeridge, Ariel Zirulnick, Richie Duchon, Aarti Shahani.