(With apologies to that comic-con darling Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - although there’s nothing funny or juvenile about our story today.)
It’s probably hard to overestimate just how much the Trump administration hates California. It’s almost understandable given how solidly California mid-term voters rebuked him, or that California reps have already started down the impeachment road.
But as we last wrote about this, California has powerfully led the nation against many unpopular Trump Administration policies – so unpopular, in fact, that the Administration has been forced to fight back against California the only way sleazy and corrupt hacks know how: cowardly acts right before holidays.
Take one of the issues we wrote about last October: meal and rest break laws for truckers. As we noted at that time:
For almost two decades, California has had a meal and rest law for commercial truckers, protecting all motorists from highway accidents. But the American Trucking Association has now petitioned the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to preempt California’s sensible law. … The trucking industry wants to prevent the state from having authority in this area. Notably, 20 other states have laws like California’s.
On October 29, 2017, a number of labor, consumer, civil rights, legal and other public interest groups sent a letter to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration urging rejection of the trucking industry’s petition.
But on December 21, the Friday before Christmas, the FMCSA granted the industry petition, promising a new surge of fatigued truckers on the road. Are these people nuts? Business Insider wrote:
Desiree Wood, who began trucking in 2007, said not giving paid rest breaks could put the safety of truck drivers and typical drivers at risk.
Truckers who are not properly rested are more likely to get into accidents; 13% of commercial-vehicle drivers who get into accidents are fatigued, according to an FMCSA study. Fatigued drivers, in general, are three times as likely to get into a car accident than well-rested drivers.
"It's really a travesty," Wood, who is also president of Real Women in Trucking, told Business Insider. "It truly defies safety. If you really cared about safety, you would want people on the highway who are not stressed out about their pay and who are well-rested."
The Teamsters have now filed a lawsuit to invalidate the agency’s actions. But we just may have to wait this out until we can elect a less corrupt, safety-conscious, worker-friendly President again. In the meantime, props to California for doing whatever it can to stop whatever it can. The rest of us appreciate it.
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