scholarly journals Battling Blind Spots: Hours of Service Regulations and Contentious Mobilities in the BC-Based Long Haul Trucking Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amie McLean
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Mechanism ◽  
Foreign Worker ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Truck Drivers ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Labour Mobility ◽  
Employment Equity ◽  
Heavy Truck ◽  
Potential Exploitation ◽  
Blind Spots

This article explores arenas of contention in which long haul truckers’ workplace mobilities are enmeshed. I critically analyze the grounded implications of Hours of Service (HoS) regulations, a primary regulatory mechanism for addressing the dangers posed by truck driver fatigue. I argue that HoS regulations enforce a neoliberal individualization of responsibility that fails to account for industry power dynamics or truckers’ lived experiences of labour mobility. These dynamics add to concerns about the potential exploitation of migrant truck drivers, including through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Inasmuch as they fail to address the classed, gendered and racialized dynamics of trucking mobilities, HoS regulations are implicated in perpetuating hierarchies of power in the industry. As such, they are inadequate and – in contextually specific ways – counterproductive to promoting employment equity or overall public safety. These issues are particularly evident in the contentious politics of blame concerning heavy truck-involved collisions.

scholarly journals Intractosoma: Toward an Epistemology of Complexity Based on Intra-acting Bodies

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sainath Suryanarayanan
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Gene Environment Interaction ◽  
Politics Of Knowledge ◽  
Gene Environment ◽  
Complex Phenomena ◽  
Interaction Research ◽  
Blind Spots

In this essay, I argue for an epistemology of complexity that is centered on intra-acting—always already interacting and becoming—bodies. I utilize analyses of the politics of knowledge concerning honey bee declines and gene-environment interaction research to outline a feminist-oriented epistemology in terms of multisensorial corporealities that I call “intractosoma.” I argue that re-organizing the production of observation, reduction, and difference along the lines of an intractosomal epistemology of complexity would lead to a more accurate understanding of complex phenomena, and entail a different politics in which the constructed distance between observers and observed can no longer absolve observers of “response-ability.” By shifting the locus of concern to always already enmeshed bodies, I seek to open analyses to a plurality of observers with their associated blind-spots and power dynamics, and a multiplicity of forms of knowing and becoming, beyond instrumentation, computation and quantification..

3314 Measurement of heavy truck drivers' stress during Eco-driving

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012.21 (0) ◽  
pp. 175-178
Author(s):  
Kohei SAKUMA ◽  
Kimihiko NAKANO ◽  
Hirofumi YASUI ◽  
Shigeyuki YAMABE ◽  
Yoshihiro SUDA
Keyword(s):  
Truck Drivers ◽  
Heavy Truck

scholarly journals Naturalistic Study of Truck Following Behavior

2017 ◽  
Vol 2615 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Nodine ◽  
Andy Lam ◽  
Mikio Yanagisawa ◽  
Wassim Najm
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Truck Drivers ◽  
Crash Risk ◽  
Naturalistic Study ◽  
Manual Response ◽  
Baseline Case ◽  
Heavy Truck ◽  
Naturalistic Driving ◽  
Reduce Emissions ◽  
Automated Response

A baseline case was created for the following behavior of heavy-truck drivers with the use of naturalistic driving data to support the development of automated platooning. A truck platoon is a string of trucks following each other in the same lane at short distances. Grouping vehicles in platoons can increase capacity on roads, save significant fuel, reduce emissions, and potentially result in improved safety. However, these benefits can be realized only if the platoons operate in an automated, coordinated manner. Because little literature of truck following behavior exists to support the development of such truck platoons, this research focused on how closely trucks follow other vehicles on highways under various environmental conditions, how closely a truck follows a leading vehicle when other vehicles cut in between, and the safety impact of following at different headways. Findings indicate that trucks follow other vehicles at an average headway of about 2 s overall, and those headways are shorter when following a passenger car rather than a heavy truck, on state highways rather than on Interstates, in clear weather rather than in rain or snow, and during the day rather than during at night. Vehicles usually do not cut in when a truck is following another vehicle at less than 25-m (82-ft) or 1.0-s headway. For manual response times, the rear-end crash risk increases considerably at headways of less than 1.0 s; for automated response times, crash risk is almost negligible at headways as low as 0.5 s.

Unraveling Power Dynamics in Communities of Practice

2011 ◽  
pp. 70-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Veenswijk ◽  
Cristina Chisalita
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Organizational Context ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Theoretical Evaluation ◽  
Construction Firms ◽  
European Public ◽  
Blind Spots

This chapter concentrates on the question how does power dynamics relate to the development of Communities of Practice within the organizational context of European public-private Megaprojects. The notion of power seems to be one of the underdeveloped fields in current CoP theory (Veenswijk & Chisalita, 2007). After a theoretical evaluation of the CoP concept, a Dutch Community of Practice case ‘Partners in Business’ is presented. In this community, actors of four leading Dutch construction firms and the Ministry of Public Works participate in an informal and unofficial setting. This community was established in 2005 and is still active as innovative platform in the infrastructural field. The researchers act as catalyst and project reflector during the different stages of community building. After presentation and analysis of the case, we discuss the results of the case study while reflecting back on the theory, and we illustrate the advantages of considering the blind spots relating to power dynamics in CoP theory.

scholarly journals Contingent Relations: Migrant Wellbeing and Economic Development in Rural Manitoba

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Foreign Worker ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Labour Mobility ◽  
Foreign Labour ◽  
Transnational Family ◽  
Permanent Residency

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Manitoba and the Philippines, this paper uses the example of the small town of Douglas, which since 2009 has been home to a small Filipino community, as a tenuous counter-point to the accounts of exclusion that dominate the scholarship on Temporary Foreign Labour in Canada. This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in Manitoba with the region’s newest immigrants—those recruited to ensure the viability of the new, diversified rural regional economy, and more specifically, the tourism and hospitality sector, established in the 1970s. In 2009, unable to meet its labour needs regionally, a local hotel began recruiting temporary foreign labour. By 2014, the Hotel had recruited 71 workers from the Philippines, most of whom arrived through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program; others having arrived through the province’s immigration scheme, the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP). A reflection of the ubiquity of globalized Filipino migration, the well-being of these workers had long been informed by economic development in the Philippines and the centrality of international labour mobility to that state project. What emerges from the data is a simultaneous acceptance and contestation of the conditions of transnational family life, and moreover—reflecting the focus of this special issue—the extent to which migrant well-being shifts in accordance to labour mobility regimes responsive to development. Migrant workers and their families are implicated in these connected, yet differently motivated, state projects. And while particular narratives concerning their contributions come to be valorized and even celebrated, their mental, physical, affective, and relational well-being is often over-looked by those who benefit from their labour and mobility. Of equal importance is the provincial state’s participation in this process through the provision of permanent residency to existing and in-coming migrants. While this benefits individual families, it does not inherently challenge the logics of neoliberalism; rather, drawing on its nuances, it create new possibilities for capital accumulation and exploitation, while offering some protection for select families who are willing and able to abide by the terms established by their employer and the Manitoba state.

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