Digital hour-logging is mandatory for truckers. Surveillance experts worry it won't stop there

Technology to track truckers while they're on the road could be a canary in the coal mine for workplace surveillance, experts say.

Electronic logging devices (ELD) are billed as a way to make roads safer by keeping truckers accountable to their allowed hours of service. But the devices raise questions about what information employers are collecting about their workers.

"People sort of tend to view the trucker as an 'other,'" said Karen Levy, author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology and the New Workplace Surveillance. "They maybe say … 'You know, that maybe makes sense for truckers, but it wouldn't make sense for me.'"

"The issues truckers are facing, I think, are issues that everybody is beginning to face — particularly post-pandemic — as these technologies become used in more remote work."

Transport Canada will begin enforcing the use of ELDs for certain commercial vehicle drivers, such as long-haul truckers, on Jan. 1, 2023. The regulation, which came into effect in June 2021, aims to track a driver's hours of service — the amount of time they can be behind the wheel on any given day. ELDs have been required in the United States since 2017. 

In addition to logging the number of hours a driver operates the vehicles, the devices can track information such as vehicle location and speed.

Levy said that the proliferation of ELDs has opened the doors for other monitoring systems that can monitor driving behaviours, like hard braking or swerving, and may include driver-facing cameras that use artificial intelligence to track eye movements and check for signs of drowsiness. 

The devices don't address the factors she says are driving fatigue among many truckers, including declining wages over decades.

"If you look at the way that people respond to these things — and I think the way any of us would respond — what that ends up meaning is that workers feel kind of a lack of dignity in their job, they feel a lack of trust in their job" said Levy, an assistant professor of information science at Cornell University in New York. 

"And that often, you know, runs people out of those jobs."

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA), a group representing trucking associations across the country, says it's "100 per cent supportive" of the federal government's ELD mandate.

"They add transparency, they level the playing field, they save time for drivers and companies … [and] they add accountability to the entire process," said Geoff Wood, senior vice-president of communications for CTA.

Under federal hours of service rules, drivers are not allowed to drive more than 13 hours in a day.

The incoming mandate, he says, aims to automate the process of logging their driving hours, something they are already doing manually. Drivers previously filled out paper log books.