Browsing by Subject "Commercial vehicle operators"
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Item Determining the Value of Real Time Congestion Information for Commercial Vehicle Operators(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 1999-04) Beier, Frederick J.In this project, researchers sent mail surveys to commercial vehicle operators (CVOs)--for-hire arriers and private fleet operations-in the Twin Cities to determine their use of congestion information and their ability to attach specific values to congestion costs. The project also assessed the ability of CVOs to avoid congestion. The report presents survey findings. Despite the fact that a vast majority of respondents indicated congestion information would be useful, CVOs do not rely currently on available congestion information to any significant extent. The reasons may include lack of awareness and/or an inability of CVOs to effectively use the form and content of the information. For-hire carriers also are not well-equipped to estimate congestion costs with any degree of confidence. This results from apparently inadequate costing systems and/or technology to capture costs at the vehicle level. Further, respondents said that they had very little flexibility to adjust schedules to avoid congestion. Also, shippers without private fleets feel significantly less strongly about congestion as a problem than their counterparts with such fleets. Thus carriers maybe constrained in their ability to use congestion information. The report also contains a demographic profile of CVOs operating in the Twin Cities and recommendations for further research.Item The Effect of Sleep Deprivation on Driving Performance(University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, 2009-01) Bloomfield, John; Harder, Kathleen A.; Chihak, Benjamin J.Each of twenty commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers participated in a single twenty-hour experimental session, during which they were continuously kept awake, but were allowed to ingest caffeine and use tobacco as they would in real-world conditions. Each participant drove in a fixed-base advanced driving simulator for approximately one hour on four occasions (at 9:00 am, 3:00 pm, 9:00 pm, and 3:00 am). The 59.5-mile (95.8-km) test route was designed with overpasses and intersections and changes in speed limits—to make the driving experience more like real-word driving. After the fourth drive, the participants were driven to the University of Minnesota’s General Clinical Research Center, where they slept for eight hours. The main result was that the steering performance of CMV drivers was impaired when they stayed awake for an extended period: There was a considerable increase in steering instability between the morning drive, at 9:00 am, and the nighttime drive, at 3:00 pm—an increase likely to have been produced by sleep deprivation. [Other results were: (1) stopping behavior improved throughout the session—suggesting practice effects; (2) after the fourth drive, there was less reduction in the participants’ pupil size—but, since there was no difference in pupil size before the fourth drive, there was no evidence to suggest that pupil size reductions could be used to predict sleep deprivation; (3) data from other visual performance tests showed no effect of time of day; and, (4) results obtained from reaction time tests did not show decrements in performance—instead there may have been practice effects.]Item Institutional Barriers to the Adoption of Electronic Data Collection and Interchange as It Relates to Commercial Vehicles(1993-12) Beier, Frederick J.This study examines the interface between state and regulatory agencies and commercial vehicle operators regarding the application of electronic technology. The various processes followed by the state agencies are documented. In addition, a survey of both freight and passenger commercial vehicle operators (CVO) is analyzed. Significant findings are that CVOs are capable of exchanging information with the state electronically although formal EDI methods appear somewhat distant. A significant portion of CVOs are also prepared to adopt basic IVHS technology which would allow trucks to bypass weigh stations. A summary of barriers to the widespread adoption of these technologies is also included as is a literature review.