Episodes
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
In March 2020, you awoke to find that the government deemed you essential or nonessential. Over-the-road (OTR) haulers, or truck drivers, were deemed essential. But as the arrival of healthcare workers was celebrated with fire engine parades, truck drivers were spared recognition and told to shift into overdrive and deal with peeled back restrictions, including letting drivers with learner’s permits drive without their Commercial Drivers License (CDL) and changing hours of service guidelines so truckers could drive longer than they would be allowed to otherwise. In other words, truckers were directed to stretch themselves, and not just absent parades, but in a landscape of closed waysides, truck stops, restaurants -- while being told to stay in their cabs when picking up or delivering their cargo. Being a trucker before the pandemic meant choosing a profession under-appreciated by the public. During the pandemic, finite truckers were unfathomably treated as expendable. IN THIS EPISODE. Doc interviews former trucker Jonathan Burger to discuss the state of OTR haulers before the pandemic, at the onset of the pandemic, and now in 2022. Jonathan will talk about OTR haulers access to toilet facilities, restaurants, and places to park when they sleep. In addition, Jonathan will bring awareness to lesser known aspects of trucking including new Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandates, negative behaviors within the trucker workforce, hazard pay (lack of), and lumpers. Doc and Jonathan consider how government and society might better demonstrate appreciation from truckers - the seemingly forgotten essential workers. ABOUT JONATHAN BURGER. Jonathan Burger has a YouTube channel focused on Second Amendment activism/advocacy. His channel is called Guns N BBQ as he periodically tosses in content about his hobby of barbecuing. He is a former armed security officer and corrections officer turned truck driver. Jonathan drove truck for just over 5 years before going blind. Shortly after losing his vision he decided to start a YouTube channel. Jonathan remains well-connected to the OTR hauler community and understands the lesser-understood nodes along the OTR hauler network. PRE-2020 STATE OF TRUCKING. Jonathan reminds us that the trucking industry had challenges prior to the pandemic. Overnight parking was particularly difficult to find and even booking ahead didn’t necessarily secure a spot for the rig. Fewer businesses were allowing truckers to park in their lots due to the poor behavior of some in the industry who would leave behind trash. IMPACT OF 2017 ELD MANDATE. On January 23, 2022, Grace Dean of Business Insider wrote an article titled: Truckers say an electronic device that measures the hours they drive each day sometimes leaves them stranded just 30 minutes from home. While truckers had maintained paper logging records for decades, electronic logging devices went into effect in 2017 for most rigs. The logs track when truckers drive and take breaks, but the system is inflexible. Jonathan offered an example of a trucker taking a break in the parking lot near a warehouse. A few minutes into the mandated break, someone asks the driver to move his truck to the end of the lot, perhaps a hundred feet away. When the truck begins to move, the ELD resets the break. Ultimately, the purpose of ELDs was to prevent fatigued drivers from being on the roads - so ELDs make sense, but in their current incarnation, they seem to be too restrictive. PANDEMIC RELAXED TRUCKING RULES WITHOUT SUPPORT TO TRUCKERS - LUMPERS CASH IN AS DRIVERS TOLD NOT TO UNLOAD THEIR FREIGHT. On March 13, 2020, the US government made an emergency relief declaration that allowed OTR drivers with expiring licenses to continue working, eliminated the 30-minute break requirement during 11 hours driving, and relaxed the 60/70-hour rule. However, neither federal or state governments took action to support truckers. Arizona opened two shuttered waysides with limited hours - so that was at least something. But, no hazard pay for truckers, no National Guard deployed to keep open waysides and supply food, showers, and basic care to truckers. County fairgrounds could have been temporarily opened for truckers, right? There were no hero parades for truckers - even as wait times increased for truckers to unload and they were told to stay in their rigs, cubed away from the world. BROWN BAG BOOST CAMPAIGN. Doc and Jonathan pondered items that might go into a brown bag that would be given, as a sign of support, for truckers at waysides or scales. Items included a thank you note, chunky soup, socks, plastic utensils, and 3D printed air vent diffusers. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE, BLOG & BOOKS: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David P. Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. This is episode 168 of The Safety Doc Podcast published on 01-25-2022.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Books:
- School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Velocity of Information - Human Thinking During Chaotic Times. www.velocityofinformation.com
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Doc calls our attention to the strange disappearance of civic organizations in America. Peaking in the 1960s, tiny villages and big cities bustled with volunteers of all ages to build parks, serve as crossing guards, hold free throw shooting contests for kids, work voting stations, and pass local knowledge from generation to generation. There was a time when people prioritized the time to gather at local restaurants to discuss ways to volunteer and improve their community. HISTORY. Civic organizations in the US were closely tied to church-affiliated groups (Knights of Columbus), fraternal organizations (Freemasons), and also unions. The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is an organization of U.S. war veterans. And while VFW posts were practically in every community in America following WWII, membership is dwindling and posts have been closed and consolidated. “Per a 2021 article by Faith Bottum of the Wall Street Journal, “The VFW has around 1.5 million members, a drop of a million from 1992. The average age is 67, with 400,000 members over 80. The largest organization of veterans' clubs, the American Legion, has two million members, down from 3.3 million in 1946.” POPULAR CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS. Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, Jaycees, and Optimists are among the well-known volunteer groups of the latter half of the twentieth century. Most have been reduced to a small fraction of their halcyon days. According to a 2020 article by Payal Gangishetti of Nonprofit Sector News, “The Jaycees, founded in 1920, is a leadership training and civic organization for people between the ages 18 and 40. [It’s] peak membership was 360,000 in 1976 and today has just 12,000 members in the United States. Doc recalls the village Jaycees chapter building a playground near the river in the community of 1200 where he was raised in northern Wisconsin. “The park is still there,” noted Doc. “The Jaycees and other civic organizations' names and logos adorn the ‘Welcome to Town’ signs, but for practical purposes, the organizations are extinct. Maybe their endowment funds their fee for the placards on the main roads heading into town?” LOSS OF VESTING TO BUILD COMMUNITY CONNECTEDNESS AND PERSONAL PURPOSE. As Doc researched the relationship between volunteering in civic organizations and community safety, the literature review was similar to driving a car that was out of alignment. Everything pulled in the direction of how the individual benefited from volunteering and much less was written about the collective benefit of society or of the community. Doc interprets this as false-memory solipsism. In other words, the core value of a civic organization (as written in numerous articles) is the fulfillment of each member. What’s in it for me? Simply put, the literature review doesn’t match Doc’s experiences with civic organizations. BENEFITS TO VOLUNTEERS. The Mayo Clinic Health System says volunteering reduces stress levels and the risk of depression. Volunteers often learn valuable life and job skills while staying physically and mentally active. The Mayo Clinic cites a Longitudinal Study of Aging that concludes volunteers even live longer. Volunteers who have chronic or serious illnesses often experience less pain. HealthyPeople.gov -- a part of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion that is tasked with providing science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans -- agrees. Healthy People points out that clubs offer emotional support and create a sense of community. BENEFIT TO THE COMMUNITY. Beyond enriching each individual volunteer, projects benefit the greater community in the manifestations of parks or mentoring. Groups might focus on raking leaves at somebody’s house. Build relationships - rally around people in need. A Lions Club in Windsor Locks (pop. 12,613), Connecticut ran the volunteer ambulance service in 2019! WHY THE DECLINE? The Loki argument is “The Internet” wiped out the organizations. But, this is recited by people who don’t recall the days before the Internet. The across-the-board declines in membership appeared in the 1980s. Most recently, remote work mobility and pandemic cocooning might have sealed the fates for many civic organizations. These organizations have adapted to social media platforms, but that isn’t a substitute for in vivo community enrichment activities. DOC’S CIVIC VOLUNTEERING. From 2004-2009, Doc served as a volunteer tour guide and handyman at historic Fort Winnebago Surgeons’ Quarters in Portage, Wisconsin. With his Dad, he re-built the split rail fence and the well. Doc also volunteered in various roles for the monthly community lunch at Couper Hall. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE, BLOG & BOOKS: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David P. Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. This is episode 167 of The Safety Doc Podcast published on 01-18-2022.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Books:
- School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Velocity of Information - Human Thinking During Chaotic Times. www.velocityofinformation.com
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
Doc was recently interviewed by a large-market news company assembling a documentary about youth violence directed at adults. Ultimately, the question of “What can be done to prevent this?” was asked. A staunch proponent of increasing funding, research, and training on threat identification and reporting, Dr. Perrodin delivered his versed spell-binder on the matter. When asked about sports, or perhaps the decline of youth sports, contributing to youth violence, Dr. Perrodin found himself conflicted with the research. YOUTH SPORTS PARTICIPATION IN AMERICA ARE DECREASING, INCREASING, or CONFUSING. Per the National Council of Youth Sports, “About 60 million children and teens from age 6 to 18 participate in organized sports each year with 73 percent involved in more than one sport.” But those numbers are complicated. From 2008 to 2018, Aspen Project Play found that the participation rate of kids between the ages of 6 and 12 dropped from 45 to 38 percent, due largely to the increasing costs, time commitments, and competitive nature of organized sports leagues. Statista reports (2019) reports that there are 50 million children in the United States between the ages of six and seventeen. DOES PARTICIPATING IN SPORTS DECREASE JUVENILE DELINQUENCY? According to a 2015 study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, “Participation in sports activities is very popular among adolescents, and is frequently encouraged among youth. Many psychosocial health benefits in youth are attributed to sports participation, but to what extent this positive influence holds for juvenile delinquency is still not clear on both the theoretical and empirical level. SOURCE: doi: 10.1007/s10964-015-0389-7.” As Dr. Perrodin examined studies and meta-analysis reports, the findings largely fell into the same basin - there was not a statistical relation between youth sports participation and youth violence. The most prevalent connections were between youth physical activity and youth physical health. HOW ABOUT E-SPORTS? This is where things get interesting. When we think of youth sports, our minds are populated with images of baseball diamonds and folding-camp-chair-lined soccer fields. Though generating controversy over whether the pastime qualifies as true sport, E-Sports has exploded in popularity in recent years. In a 2019 Forbes article by Bob Cook, “At least seven state high school associations are offering esports at a varsity level, and more will add it. Even states without official varsity esports run state tournaments, and prizes can include scholarship money to one of the 115 colleges (and growing) fielding esports teams, and, in many cases, offering scholarships to gamers.” Complexity Gaming, a professional esports organization owned by Dallas Cowboys' owner and youth sports investor Jerry Jones, is building a training facility at the Cowboys' headquarters, The Star in Frisco, Texas. https://complexity.gg/ DO VIDEO GAMES MAKE YOUTH VIOLENT? No. This question is oft-asked, and the 2008 book Grand Theft Childhood by Harvard University’s Dr. Cheryl K. Olson and Dr. Lawrence Kutner is one of the most-cited works to debunk violent or graphic video games causing youth to engage in violent behavior. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUTH VIOLENCE RESEARCH? We are at a disruption point or possibly a convergence in what is considered a youth sport. Studies seeking to uncover relationships between participation in sports and violence must now include E-sports. What nuanced areas might be studied in E-sports? If Doc was assembling a research study, his constructs might be (1) badges and incentives; (2) social etiquette and moderating; (3) incidents of delinquent or violent behavior compared to non-sport youth; and (4) incidents of harm to self or harm to others compared to overall youth population. E-SPORTS AND INCLUSION. While traditional sports are difficult to access by youth with physical disabilities, E-Sports are more inclusive. You could have a wheelchair-using student be a captain of his school’s E-Sports team. What might be the impact of E-Sports on Title IV? FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE, BLOG & BOOKS: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David P. Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. This is episode 166 of The Safety Doc Podcast published on 01-11-2022.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Books:
- School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Velocity of Information - Human Thinking During Chaotic Times. www.velocityofinformation.com
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
When his pool vacuum cleaner’s bearings failed, a Florida man didn’t bolt to Amazon to order an expensive replacement vacuum (in the slight chance it was in stock). Instead, he found open source code for a similar bearing, modified it, and then programmed his home 3D printer to make a new bearing. With the cost of operating the 3D printer at 75 watts per hour, and filament mere cents, and after a few trials, the pool vacuum was back in service for $3 of parts and power. IN THIS EPISODE. In this episode, Doc interviews flyingRich to learn about the arrival of 3D home printing as more than a novelty. In addition, flyingRich will talk about the positive impact of 3D printing in crisis situations, such as PPE items and ventilator parts as well as 3D printed mesh network solutions for antennas used in emergency communication conditions. ABOUT FLYINGRICH. flyingRich (spelled with lowercase f) has been doing tech podcasts for more than ten years (His YouTube channel is titled flyingRich). Rich is an advocate of open source software solutions. He is a regular host on "The Mini PC Show" on the PodNutz network that focuses on single board computing like the Raspberry Pi. Professionally he is a cloud engineer. Being a 3D printing enthusiast he combines the love of tech, open source & cloud computing. Rich is also a 1,000 hour instrument rated pilot. 3D HOME PRINTING NO LONGER A NOVELTY. Rich showed off a number of items that he had 3D printed, including a stand for his monitor and a specialized device to bend pipe. In fact, through open source computing and networking, Rich has worked with people across the world to design, refine, and 3D print parts for a range of applications. While the public might perceive home 3D printing as centered on toys, flutes, and trinkets, the reality is that actual houses are being 3D printed, hard-to-configure replacement parts for old homes, automotive parts, and even food. THINGIVERSE. Rich noted that much sharing exists within the 3D printing community. In particular, THINGIVERSE is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files. “Providing primary free, open-source hardware designs licensed under the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, the site allows contributors to select a user license type for the designs that they share (Source: Wikipedia). 3D PRINTING IN DISASTERS. The December 2021 wildfire that destroyed 1000 homes in Boulder County or the tornado that ripped apart towns in the Kentucky region caused massive damage with little warning. How might mobile 3D printing units be deployed and benefit these areas? Rich and Doc explored this question. Rich felt that 3D printers could build many of the parts needed for geodesic domes, which are lattice shell structures. These are both strong and relatively easy to configure. They could provide shelter to people and animals or staging of assets. Doc felt that portable 3D printing units might yield much relief to hurricane stricken areas, such as the Bahamas. On a September 11, 2019 show, Doc interviewed German Parodi, a disability rights advocate. In that interview, Parodi explained that people (in the Bahamas) in need of catheters, for example, were unable to obtain them as large planes were unable to land at the damaged airport and it was time-consuming and red-tape-filled to have pallets broken into smaller shipments. A 3D printer might have offered other options in that scenario. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE, BLOG & BOOKS: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David P. Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. This is episode 165 of The Safety Doc Podcast published on 01-04-2022.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Books:
- School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Velocity of Information - Human Thinking During Chaotic Times. www.velocityofinformation.com