During these sleeper berth periods, your 14-hour clock is paused, so you can rest without losing duty hours. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced Tuesday a pilot program intended to gauge the feasibility of adding more split sleeper berth options to hours of service regulations.
WASHINGTON, — Over a year after a U.S. Court ordered a rewrite of hours-of-service rules, transport officials have unveiled the new regime, which includes a major revision to the controversial sleeper-berth provision.The change — which now requires drivers to take eight consecutive hours off as part of their 10-hour, off-duty time — has not received much applause from carriers. “We are not in favour of this outcome. Not at all,” says Gord Loney, safety and compliance manager for Shadow Lines, a 200-truck fleet in Langley B.C. “We were expecting better.”In response to the US Court of Appeals’ demand last summer that the new regulation must consider “the physical health of the operators,” the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration kept the nucleus of the rule intact. The 2003 regulation prohibited truckers from driving more than 11 hours in a row, work longer than 14 hours in a shift, and driving more than 60 hours in seven days, or 70 hours in eight days.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A former Google engineer was charged Tuesday with stealing self-driving car technology from the company shortly before he joined Uber’s efforts to catch up in the high-stakes race to build robotic vehicles.The indictment filed by the U.S.
Attorney’s office in San Jose, California, is an offshoot of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Waymo, a self-driving car pioneer spun off from Google. Uber agreed to settle the case for $245 million last year, but the presiding judge made an unusual recommendation to open a criminal probe after seeing enough evidence to conclude a theft may have occurred.Uber considered having self-driving technology crucial to survive and counter potential competitive threats from Waymo and dozens of other companies working on robotic vehicles. Uber wants to build self-driving cars so it can eliminate the need to have a human behind the wheel, one of the biggest expenses in its still-unprofitable ride-hailing service.Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer in robotic vehicles, was charged with 33 counts of trade secrets theft. Each count carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or $8.25 million if convicted of all counts.Miles Ehrlich, one of Levandowski’s attorneys, maintained his innocence in a statement read outside the courthouse.“He didn’t steal anything, from anyone,” Ehrlich said. “This case rehashes claims already discredited in a civil case that settled more than a year.”Prosecutors say the probe is ongoing, but they wouldn’t say whether Uber and former CEO Travis Kalanick are targets. Prosecutors say Google, Waymo and Uber cooperated in the investigation. Uber issued a statement Tuesday promising to continue to cooperate.Although Tuesday’s indictment didn’t charge Uber, it’s a stain for a company that has been trying to recover from a series of scandals since jettisoning Kalanick two years ago.
Uber has also been dealing with fallout from its own acknowledgement of rampant sexual harassment, its use of software designed to dupe regulators and a yearlong cover-up of a hacking attack that stole the personal information of 57 million passengers and 600,000 drivers.The case seems unlikely to endear Uber with investors already skeptical about the company’s ability to make money after piling up billions of dollars of losses. The lack of profits is the main reason the company’s stock has fallen about 25% below the price set during its much-ballyhooed initial public offering of stock in May. Nonetheless, Uber’s stock fell less than 1% after the announcement.The FBI depicted its pursuit of the complex case as a sign of its commitment to protecting technology considered vital to the economy’s growth. “Silicon Valley is not the Wild West,” said John Bennett, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.Levandowski, 39, turned himself in and was released later in the day on a $2 million bond. Prosecutors agreed to the release, even while characterizing him as a flight risk because of his wealth and dual citizenship in the U.S. Levandowski, though, had already surrendered both passports to the FBI and will be required, at least initially, to wear an ankle bracelet with GPS tracking.
He is also banned from airports while release details are worked out.The indictment accuses Levandowski of stealing years of top-secret information, which prosecutors likened to the crown jewels of the Waymo spinoff. That included breakthroughs in lidar, a key piece of technology that enables self-driving cars to detect what’s around them.During the Waymo trial, Kalanick conceded that Uber needed to develop self-driving cars if it hoped to maintain its early position as the world’s largest ride-hailing service. But he denied that he ever resorted to stealing technology from Google, whom he believed was an ally until he began to suspect the company intended to launch its own ride-hailing service consisting entirely of its robotic vehicles.But Kalanick also testified that his push to build a fleet of self-driving cars for Uber led him to start wooing Levandowski in 2015 while he was still at Google. Levandowski left early the following year to devote his time to Otto, a self-driving truck company he started with another Google employee, Lior Ron, who also left. In a move that is unfortunately starting to lose its shock value, another truckload carrier has shut down operations without notice, reportedly stranding drivers without an immediate explanation or a way to get home.Denver-based HVH Transportation, which according to Department of Transportation records had 344 power units and 322 drivers, began sending out messages to drivers Tuesday evening to cease operations, according to reports. Drivers then discovered their fuel cards had been deactivated, as well.According to the company website, which was still up and running Wednesday morning, HVH operated in 29 states, mostly west of the Mississippi and in the Great Lakes region, and in Alberta, Canada.
The company had six terminals, including two in Colorado and one each in Chicago, Dallas, Memphis, Tennessee, and Southern California.According to the company website, Robert Holder started Holder Valley Holdings Transportation Inc. In 1977 when he purchased Thacker Brothers Transportation, a small trucking company that served the Denver/Pueblo/Colorado Springs are.
Holder build the company up through expansion and acquisitions. In addition to truckload, HVH advertised regional, dedicated and logistics services.In 2012, the company was purchased by HCI Equity Partners.As of midday Wednesday, the company has not issued an explanation for the sudden shutdown.This is the latest in an unsettling trend this year of carriers abruptly ceasing operations with little or no advance notice to their employees. Arguably the most notable of these was Falcon Transport, which shut down in similar fashion April 27, sending out texts and emails to more than 600 employees then immediately deactivating fuel cards, stranding drivers just as it happened to HVH drivers this week.
Falcon was also owned by an equity group, CounterPoint Capital Partners.Since word of HVH’s closure began to spread, at least one fellow carrier, Marshfield, Wisconsin-based Roehl Transport Inc., has already offered assistance, posting on social media that if any stranded HVH drivers spots a Roehl driver they should talk to them about arranging a ride home.“We are incredibly disappointed to hear of yet another trucking company shuttering its doors and leaving its drivers with no job and no way to get home,” a post on Roehl’s Facebook page reads. “In times like these, our values of Mutual Support and Teamwork call on us to act beyond ourselves to help others in need.”.