MILWAUKEE: Most truckers play by the rules.

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

But every day, a significant percentage 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. Every year, hundreds of people die in crashes involving tired truck drivers.

All of which has critics of trucking regulatory policies ar Please see Truck, D4

guing 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 the 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 proved to significantly reduce 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 Associations, 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 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 health,'' said Donaldson, senior research director with Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, 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 safety board study of accidents that killed truck drivers 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 crashes 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 that trucker fatigue plays a role in 8.15 percent of fatal crashes involving large trucks. That would translate to more than 400 highway deaths a year.

In crashes involving a car and a large truck that kill or injure someone, car drivers usually are at fault. But the raw number of deaths in large-truck accidents an average of 5,200 a year in the past decade remains too high, many say.

''There's a benefit to some carriers and some drivers to disobey the rules,'' said Anne T. McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The safety administration probably won't issue final regulations on electronic logs for months, if not longer. Those rules are unlikely to end the debate, which could intensify as the ranks of the 1.7 million truckers on the highways grow by 200,000 to 300,000 by 2014.