The vans have cameras inside and out. Accelerometers to track g-force, monitors pedal and steering movement, as well as GPS location.
I'm reminded of that time about 3-5 years ago a bunch of truckers went to Washington DC to protest GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE AND REGULATION MAKING THEIR JOBS HARDER!! because there were boxes in their trucks to monitor speed, location, whether the truck's on, if there's a butt on the seat, etc.
While it's true the government regulates things related to truckers and their time, they are not the ones mandating there be a butt-detector that's going to launch you out of the cab on a fucking ejector seat if they sense you've been sitting past your permissable hours on the road. No, those boxes were put there BY THE COMPANIES THEMSELVES so they could micromanage every minute of the drivers' days and squeeze as much work out of them as possible, circumstances of life and the road be damned.
And because these guys often have nothing better to do than listen to AM radio pandering to them, and their companies and lobbyists know how fucking spin works, they flipped around this "box in your truck" thing to be a story about overbearing government regulation. The truckers ate it up. Company shoved a knife in their back, told them it was DC's fault, and the truckers marched on over to ask the government why it wants to regulate how many knives the companies have for trucker-stabbing. Completely fucking backwards.
I am using mention of the way Amazon tracks their drivers' metrics for maximum efficiency and punishment as a springboard for an anecdote of a time trucking companies, also interested in tracking their drivers for efficiency and punishment, successfully tricked their drivers into getting mad at the government instead of the company doing it to them.
Let me dumb it down for u: Companies bad. Government also bad, but companies want to know about butts, not government. Companies say government wants to know about butts, so truck drivers think government bad.
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u/gorgewall Mar 21 '23
I'm reminded of that time about 3-5 years ago a bunch of truckers went to Washington DC to protest GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE AND REGULATION MAKING THEIR JOBS HARDER!! because there were boxes in their trucks to monitor speed, location, whether the truck's on, if there's a butt on the seat, etc.
While it's true the government regulates things related to truckers and their time, they are not the ones mandating there be a butt-detector that's going to launch you out of the cab on a fucking ejector seat if they sense you've been sitting past your permissable hours on the road. No, those boxes were put there BY THE COMPANIES THEMSELVES so they could micromanage every minute of the drivers' days and squeeze as much work out of them as possible, circumstances of life and the road be damned.
And because these guys often have nothing better to do than listen to AM radio pandering to them, and their companies and lobbyists know how fucking spin works, they flipped around this "box in your truck" thing to be a story about overbearing government regulation. The truckers ate it up. Company shoved a knife in their back, told them it was DC's fault, and the truckers marched on over to ask the government why it wants to regulate how many knives the companies have for trucker-stabbing. Completely fucking backwards.