Study Supports HOS Restart

This story appears in the Feb. 3 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said last week a new study indicates its current hours-of-service rule is more effective at combating fatigue, a conclusion that trucking groups and several members of Congress immediately disputed.

“This new study confirms the science we used to make the hours-of-service rule more effective at preventing crashes that involve sleepy or drowsy truck drivers,” FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said. “For the small percentage of truckers that average up to 70 hours of work a week, two nights of rest is better for their safety and the safety of everyone on the road.”

American Trucking Associations said what the study doesn’t say may be as significant as what it does say.

“We appreciate FMCSA releasing the results of its restart field study,” said Dave Osiecki, ATA executive vice president and chief of national advocacy. “However, in many respects, this short report is lacking critical analyses on several important issues.”

The study was conducted by the Sleep and Performance Research Center, Washington State University and Pulsar Informatics Inc. It involved 106 commercial drivers working for three carriers that provided 1,260 days of data, driving a total of more than 414,000 miles from January to July 2013.

The drivers’ electronic logs were used to identify the periods when they were on duty, when they were driving and to help define their duty cycles and restart breaks.

FMCSA said the study concluded that drivers who began their workweek with just one nighttime period of rest exhibited more lapses of attention, reported greater sleepiness and showed increased lane deviation, compared with the two nights of rest in the updated 34-hour restart break,

The study found that drivers affected by the new restart rule are primarily nighttime drivers — those who also are at the greatest risk of fatigue.

However, ATA said the study failed to evaluate the safety effects of the once-per-week restart restriction, commonly called the 168-hour rule, nor did it address the real-world safety implications of putting more trucks on the road during daytime hours, when more passenger vehicles are also on the road.

“While the study includes some findings favorable to certain portions of the new restart rule, the incomplete nature of the analysis and the lack of justification for the once-weekly use restriction is consistent with the flawed analyses that led the agency to make these changes in the first place,” Osiecki said.

Likewise, a spokeswoman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said the study “does not appear to us to be representative of those actually affected by the newer hours of service. So we are skeptical it can be applied to the larger population within the industry.”

Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), one of three members of Congress who in October introduced legislation to delay the start of the restart provision, called the study “worthless.”

Hanna’s bill calls for the Government Accountability Office to do a study of the restart provision.

Hanna said FMCSA is telling millions of truckers when they are tired and ignored the fact that it does not address perhaps the most serious issue that could change the entire outcome of the study — forcing truckers to work in the morning rush hour when roads are most congested and dangerous.

“This half-baked study only underscores the need to legislatively delay the rule and have GAO conduct an independent analysis of the study so we can get a credible account of what this rule will truly mean for the safety of truckers, commuters and businesses,” Hanna said.

Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), another co-sponsor of the restart bill, said the study “does not offer an accurate representation of truck drivers’ alertness.”

“When implementing a regulation that would trim back millions of truck drivers’ work hours, impact product delivery time and affect emergency relief time in instances of national disasters, I would have expected FMCSA to have used a sample size of far greater than 106 truckers,” Rice said.

The final 2011 hours rule, which became effective July 1, requires any driver working long enough to need a restart to take off at least 34 consecutive hours that include two periods between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.

The rule suggested that “only the most extreme schedules will be impacted, and more than 85% of the truck driving workforce will see no changes.”

The prior rule shortened the driving window to 14 consecutive hours and increased the off-duty period from eight to 10 hours, but it increased driving time from 10 to 11 hours and allowed drivers to restart their duty time calculations whenever they took at least 34 consecutive hours off.

Meanwhile, the study said that wrist activity monitors measured drivers’ sleep-wake patterns and drivers’ fatigue levels were measured three times per day by means of a psychomotor vigilance test, a well-validated and widely used standard measure of fatigue.

“Earlier laboratory studies we have done for FMCSA suggested that the old provision did not provide sufficient sleep opportunity for nighttime drivers whose restart break included only one nighttime period,” said Hans Van Dongen, of Washington State University, the study’s principal researcher. “Our field study has shown that nighttime drivers tended to have a nocturnal sleep schedule during their restart breaks and that adding a second nighttime period therefore allows them additional time for sleep recuperation.”

Staff Reporter Michele Fuetsch contributed to this story.