Driver records: Balancing safety and privacy needs

Surveillance and trust

Dr. Colin Bennett is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where he teaches a range of courses on U.S. politics, political analysis and information/communications policy. He is also an internationally recognized authority on the subject of privacy, with a long list of books, papers and speeches on the subject to his credit (http://web.uvic.ca/polisci/bennett).

In a brief interview with Fleet Owner, he discussed the balance between driver surveillance and trust:

FO: Has technology made it harder to protect individual privacy?

Bennett: Technology used to be the problem, but now it can also be privacy protective, through things like data encryption, for example. A recent poll shows that 70% of Americans worry about the invasion of their privacy through new technology, higher than the percentage in Australia, Great Britain or New Zealand. However, technology is not the problem per se. It is the way technology is applied. It is a question of who is using the technology, how, and to what ends.

FO: Are there unique privacy issues related to the monitoring of commercial truck drivers?

Bennett: Oh yes indeed. There are all kinds of privacy issues related to the monitoring of drivers today. Technology enables companies to monitor precise driver location, speed, time spent on particular tasks and for rest periods and breaks, alcohol and drug use, etc. It is understandable that companies would want to do this and it offers many societal benefits, but there are trade-offs, including the erosion of trust, and that has its own set of problems.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that over-surveillance erodes morale, trust and productivity over time. This means that a balance has to be achieved between using surveillance technologies to identify wrong doers and maintaining the mutual trust that is conducive to good morale and productivity.

Recently, Dr. Bennett was the opening speaker at the annual Center for Transportation Studies Research Conference at the University of Minnesota. He argued for national data privacy standards in the U.S., noting that the American approach has been to develop privacy policies for certain sectors or particular industries and then to rely on voluntary compliance and enforcement through the courts, if necessary. More information is available at www.cts.umn.edu.