Will truck-stopping technologies work
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2003-11-16
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California legislators are debating a bill that would which would mandate the use of remote-stopping devices for vehicles transporting hazardous materials.
If the bill passes, Global Positioning System and other technologies would be used to keep track of trucks carrying hazardous materials and enable them to be stopped by remote control. However, critics are saying that, while the devices may foil amateur hijackers fairly effectively, they often don't work as they should and terrorists can easily defeat them using a $20 device.
The bill is getting some stiff opposition, from California truckers who say
it would make them less competitive, and also from technology experts. A demonstration
for the California Highway Patrol (CHP) performed last year by a major trucking
company failed. A signal to stop the truck was sent but "lost in local
noise."
"The truck just kept going when they sent a signal to stop it," said professor Bill Wattenburg, of California State University. "The signal was lost in the local noise, I imagine."
When the bill was first put forward there were concerns that a terrorist could use the very device intended to stop a truck and instead use it to take control.
Not long after 9/11, California Governor Gray Davis established the Governor's Task Force on Safe Delivery of Fuels, chaired by the CHP and made up of fuel haulers, service station attendants, oil marketers, and technologists, among others. The task force is now finishing its tests of a number of different truck-stopping technologies and plans to release its findings in a June 2004 report.
The CHP will make the decision on what types of technologies will be acceptable. The agency is testing various remote-stopping technologies.
As the process of refining the bill moves forward, he said, California officials
plan to consult with people in the trucking industry about the bill and the
technologies that might be involved.
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