Articles | JBA Telematics

September 02, 2014 – from TruckingInfo.com

A driving force behind trucking safety at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Deborah M. “Debbie” Freund, died Thursday of breast cancer. She was 57.

Freund was a senior transportation specialist at the FMCSA for nearly 15 years, and at the time of her death was National Technical Expert for Vehicle Research. During that time, she served 10 years as a member of the Transportation Research Board Freight Transportation Economics and Regulation Committee.

Her regulatory development responsibilities included safety of commercial vehicle parts and accessories, driver hours-of-service, and motor carrier operations and compliance issues. She also developed and managed major research studies on driver fatigue and alertness and on new applications for vehicle sensor and communications technologies.

Freund received her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Master of Science, Transportation and Urban Systems from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Her career began at the council of state governments in Kansas City as a transportation planner. She later worked for the Federal Highway Administration at the Turner Fairbank Research Center before going to work at the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C.

She was active in the Society of Automotive Engineers, including organizing and co-organizing many SAE Commercial Vehicle Congress sessions. She was asked to deliver SAE’s prestigious Buckendale Lecture at the annual Commercial Vehicle Meeting a few years ago and received the McFarland Award for her contributions to SAE and the industry.

She also was a fellow with the Institute of Transportation Engineers and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Although she was not a member of the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council, she was a frequent sight at meetings, participating in everything from Task Force sessions to Technical Sessions.

“Debbie has been the brains and heart of the key trucking regulations, including most recently the e-log rule,” says HDT Washington Editor Oliver Patton. “She’s been a true champion for truck safety.”

She spoke last year to the Truck Writers of North America at their annual awards banquet on the topic of “Trucking Through the Government 101: Who Does What?”

“Debbie was a creative problem solver, a strong leader and a good friend to the trucking industry,” says Paul Abelson, a longtime TWNA member and trucking reporter who worked with Freund on SAE and TMC panels. “She will be missed.”

Married to Douglas White for 33 years, they lived for 30 years in Dunn Loring, Va. White says she loved live theater, concerts, hiking, birding, gardening, kayaking, bicycling, traveling, and practiced yoga since 2001. She was the chair for her local university alumni club.

There will be a memorial service on Sunday, September 14, at 2 p.m. at Murphy Funeral Home, 1102 W. Broad Street, Falls Church, VA. The family requests that donations be made in her name to the SAE Foundation at http://foundation.sae.org/.

Four Core Principles

Boardroom founder Marty Edelston had 4 core principles for business and life success:

1. He outworked everyone.

2. He had insatiable curiosity.

3. He surrounded himself with people smarter than himself
whenever and wherever possible.

4. He always thought about what he could do for you first.

Net Neutrality: It Affects You

In April, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler put forth a proposal that would allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to allow “fast lane” privileges for those content providers who are willing to pay for it. ISPs have been pushing for these changes for a long time. Consumer groups are largely against these changes. As a compromise, the FCC has allowed limited consumer protections.

For example, an ISP may demand that a video or audio streaming company pay more for a bigger internet pipe. The FCC proposal prohibits these charges from being passed directly to consumers. Nothing prohibits ISPs from indirectly passing these charges on.

One side of the argument says that providers and ISPs should be able to work out any pricing deal they wish. The other side of the argument states that the same rules that apply to telephones and wireless providers. I believe that equal access among all providers is essential to commercial services (such as ELDs and telematics services). Even some of the larger internet firms such as Google and Facebook have come out against this proposal.

In an Aug. 5 speech, President Obama stated:
“One of the issues around net neutrality is whether you are creating different rates or charges for different content providers. That’s the big controversy here. So you have big, wealthy media companies who might be willing to pay more and also charge more for spectrum, more bandwidth on the Internet, so they can stream movies faster. I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users. You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed.”

What can you do? The FCC is taking comments until September 15. You can file a comment or contact the FCC from here.

Need to learn more? We recommend:

Save the Internet Blog

Woody Leonhard’s article: Net Neutrality: What it Is, Why You Should Care

A Neutral Guide to Net Neutrality by Stephanie Cret.

Tom Risen – US News and World Report.

Edward Wyatt – New York Times.

Brian Fung – Washington Post.