Drivers of big rigs, such as these near Omaha, Neb., now use paper logbooks to record how long they've worked each day, but critics say the record system can be readily fudged and want a system of electronic logging. They say it will improve safety and reduce accidents.

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MILWAUKEE — Most truckers play by the rules.

Mile for mile, they have fewer accidents than cars. When a car and truck collide in serious accidents, it's usually the car driver's fault.

But every day, significant percentages of commercial truck drivers disregard the rules that are supposed to limit how long they work. Every month, surveys have indicated, one in eight long-haul truckers dozes at the wheel. And every year, hundreds of people die in collisions involving tired truck drivers.

All of which has critics of trucking regulatory policies arguing that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration should scrap the paper logbooks in which truckers record their hours of work and rest. Instead, the critics say, the safety administration should order use of an electronic system that the agency itself estimates would cut violations of hours rules in half.

"It's kind of ludicrous that we're still using paper logs," said Kristen A. Monaco, an economist at California State University-Long Beach, who has studied the trucking industry. "The paper logbooks are just way too easy to fudge."

Many agree. Favoring electronic logs are safety advocates, insurance companies, some of the largest trucking firms, the National Transportation Safety Board and the officers who enforce trucking regulations on the highways.

They want the government to follow the example of Europe, where new trucks must have electronic equipment that tracks drivers' hours.

The Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed a sweeping requirement for such gear in 2000 but withdrew it three years later, citing "insufficient economic and safety data, coupled with a lack of support from the transportation community." The agency now says that while electronic logging would reduce rule-breaking, it hasn't been proven to significantly cut accidents.

"A presumption has been made that (electronic log) use leads to better safety performance by carriers and drivers," said Dave Osiecki, vice president of safety, security and operations for the American Trucking Association, the industry's leading trade group. "However, there is little, if any, empirical evidence to support that position."

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association says electronic logs are no more accurate than paper, and that the technology would invade drivers' privacy. The group also says the accident rate at a large company that uses electronic logging exceeds that of several peers.

But in the eyes of people such as Gerald Donaldson, the safety administration is all but abrogating its responsibilities with its proposal to require electronic logs only for a handful of companies that are particularly egregious violators.

"It would be difficult to construct a more irresponsible approach to a technology that can help control hours-of-service violations, reduce fatigue and help improve driver help," Donaldson, senior research director of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said at a hearing in March. "This proposed rule is so utterly ludicrous, so contemptuous of the need to curtail the epidemic of drivers falsifying their logbooks so they can drive until they literally fall asleep at the wheel."

The total number of highway deaths linked to trucker fatigue is debated but appears to be in the hundreds annually.

A 1990 NTSB study of accidents fatal to truck drivers themselves found that 31 percent involved fatigue. That rate would mean truck-driver fatigue played a role in killing 250 of the 805 truckers who died in traffic collisions last year, to say nothing of the other 4,213 people killed in large-truck accidents.

In a December 2002 report, consultants to the motor carrier safety administration estimated trucker fatigue plays a role in 8.15 percent of all fatal crashes involving large trucks. That would translate to more than 400 highway deaths a year.

Some believe the total is higher. The safety administration in 2000, while still part of the Clinton administration, estimated that fatigue figured in 15 percent of all fatal crashes involving trucks. At that point, the agency proposed electronic logs for all long-haul and regional carriers.

Three years later, the safety administration, now under President Bush, dropped that proposal. Only after sharp criticism in 2004 from a federal appeals court did the agency unveil the limited rule it has now put forward.

In fatal and injury collisions involving a car and a large truck, car drivers usually are at fault, a federal study released last year found. And the fatal-crash rate for large trucks — deadly accidents per mile — has fallen significantly in recent decades. Industry representatives cite that as evidence of a strong safety record.

But the raw number of deaths in large-truck accidents, an average of 5,200 a year over the last decade, remains too high, many say.

"That's between 14 and 15 fatalities every day," said Don Osterberg, vice president of safety and driver training for Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider National Inc., one of the country's largest trucking firms. "I firmly believe that that is unacceptable."