Flutterby™! : Unhappy Truckers

Tom Vanderbilt (author of the excellent Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)) writes about the difficulty of scheduling and routing: Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems.

... For example, one major trucking company that declined to be named does “predictive analysis” on when drivers are at greater risk of being involved in a crash. Not only does the company have information on how the truck is being driven—speeding, hard-braking events, rapid lane changes—but on the life of the driver. “We actually have built into the model a number of indicators that could be surrogates for dissatisfaction,” said one employee familiar with the program.