Who is to blame for Highway Fatalities? Drivers, Carriers, ATA, the US Government or Adolf Hitler?

This is a rebuttal to those who have narrow-mindedly criticized my original post on this topic and would rather we attribute 100% responsibility for highway fatalities to Drivers.

In March 1933, Hitler had come to power in Germany. By 1941, the Holocaust was in full swing and Nazi German soldiers were killing innocent Jewish civilians. When we look back, we can say each individual person who participated in those murders was individually responsible. But without the Nazi historical context, do we do justice by not telling the full story about the pressures the Nazi soldiers were under to do such horrible acts? 

Should we look the other way when drivers speed because they are induced by the Big Trucking corporate culture to DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE under the pay per mile model? When dispatchers push drivers to do unsafe things --whether it be drive tired, speed, or drive despite adverse weather conditions, is there no culpability on them for the consequences? Are you sure you are ready to brush aside the latent threat of the driver being terminated if he doesn't assimilate into this culture? 

That is what I am saying here, not that drivers bear absolutely no responsibility. It's more of a matter of how much blame gets attributed to the driver, to the carrier and its agents, to Big Trucking's trade association and lobbying branches for sustaining this mentality and culture, and government for its role. Perhaps my title should have been "Don't SOLELY Blame the Drivers" to illustrate this point. But I was black and white to stimulate you to think and challenge you all to consider these factors that affect drivers' decisions. Like with everything else in life, it's not really a matter of which is to blame, the driver or the carrier, there are shades of gray at work and much debate over who is at fault on my last post thread (hell, we can't even all agree on how to spell that word. Is it gray or grey)? I also use a picture of Hilter above to SHOCK you into accepting the logic I offer here. No doubt, many of you will be offended by this comparison and chastise me for it. But, hey, it worked. I got your attention in a big way to open discussions on a topic nobody otherwise wants to talk about. Sometimes, the truth hurts.

I suspect many young German soldiers who later blurted out "I was just following orders" also had a real fear of being terminated... in a difference sense. Many of these soldiers were indoctrinated into Hilter's murderous plan as children over the course of a decade. An impressionable fourteen year old seduced by evil in 1933 was later a seasoned 24 year old murderer by 1943. While each one had to eventually account for their role and, I believe, be accountable to God in the end, I revert back to my original post and the statement "no driver is an island unto himself." Many in the industry want to use Drivers as a scapegoat, wash their hands of liability for the consequences of unsafe driving practices they perpetuate, and then quickly stick their heads in the sand. Enough! Safety is everyone's responsibility.

If you really want to solve the safety problem, you must look at how the "system" enables and encourages drivers to do unsafe things. It's all about the money. It's about carrier executives wanting to maximize profits. And if you use money in a way to make drivers put safety second, many of them will do exactly what you are trying to get them to do. And if YOU are the person behind creating and fostering that environment, then in the end, a great deal of blameworthiness lies with you! By paying them by the mile, YOU induce them to cheat on logs, recklessly speed, and drive fast in blizzards.

And you know that Coercion rule FMCSA proudly promulgated a while back? Well, the SBTC filed this Coercion Complaint against the city of Midland, Texas which is a receiver of supplies, for coercing drivers to violate the HOS rule by outlawing truck parking citywide and preventing drivers from stopping at the 11th hour. FMCSA brushed off our complaint on behalf of 15,000 of our members calling such interference with interstate commerce and Federal Regulations "a local issue." If that's how they treat us, how seriously do they respond to individual drivers?

We all remember as kids someone saying to us "... and if they told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" Well, if someone was pointing a loaded gun at your head after you saw them just shoot three other people, you probably would. It's time for Big Trucking to stop pointing a loaded gun at drivers by using FEAR OF STARVATION to motivate them to drive far, fast no matter what the weather is, and start paying them a reasonable base salary with bonus incentives to remove the dire situation drivers are currently placed in. They would stop screaming at you about detention time and not getting paid for all hours worked. And its time for the Federal Government to finally address the root cause-- the real safety problem-- rather than the symptoms of the problem-- and compel industry to do so by removing the Motor Carrier Exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act that gave rise to the current regime that was created, ironically, in the 1930s.