ATA Tells FMCSA Hours-of-Service Rule Is Working
Trucking industry speakers including American Trucking Associations told the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that current federal hours-of-service rules for truck drivers are working.
ATA’s Dave Osiecki was the first speaker in Tuesday’s “listening session” in Arlington, Va., the first of four such sessions FMCSA is holding around the country on the HOS rules.
“In the very real world of trucking, highway safety has improved in the past six years under these rules,” said Osiecki, ATA’s senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs.
FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro opened the session by saying the agency wanted “to reach out and gather as much information and as many comments as possible — the good, bad and the ugly.
“One fatality on the road is one too many and we owe it to the public to do better than we have been doing and I am committed to getting there,” she said.
Ferro told Transport Topics last week that the agency was committed to meeting a July deadline to revise the HOS rule for truck drivers.
Osiecki said the rule could be tweaked by adding a more flexible sleeper-berth provision and that FMCSA should focus its resources on:
• sleep disorder awareness, training and screening;
• promoting the use of fatigue risk management programs;
• increasing the availability of truck parking on important freight corridors; and
• partnering with the trucking and shipping communities to develop an educational process that identifies for drivers the location of available truck parking.
FMCSA has scheduled three more sessions: Friday, Jan. 22, in Dallas, Monday, Jan. 25, in Los Angeles and Thursday, Jan. 28, in Davenport, Iowa. Click here for more information. (FMCSA Web site.)
