Editorial: The Numbers Game

For years, trucking clamored for new hours-of-service regulations to give its drivers greater operational flexibility, and behold, the government heard the call and answered. But the industry is not being offered what it asked for, as is clear by the groundswell that has arisen in trucking ranks against the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 270-page proposal. True, not everyone is against it, but the few supporters who stand up are lost in a deep forest of opposition.

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And now we are told there is a disconnect between the goals that DOT set for its package of reformed regulations and the reality of achieving those goals.

DOT figured that regulations aimed at changing the work-rest cycles for five types of truck drivers would yield benefits in safety that could be clearly measured by fewer highway crashes and fatalities related to trucker fatigue. This focus on fatigue would lead to 115 fewer deaths annually on our highways, the agency announced. This was to be a key initiative in DOT’s drive to cut in half the number of truck-involved highway deaths by 2009.

Now comes a report from the Government Accounting Office, a trusted investigative body that looks into matters of interest to Congress, that DOT’s estimate of the life-saving benefits of its hours proposal is built on sand. The “reasonableness” of DOT’s assumptions about how the benefits would accrue is “unknown,” GAO said. DOT’s experts acknowledged they do not have a firm analytical base for their assumptions.

In other words, better management of truck driver rest should reduce the number of fatigue-related crashes — that seems intuitive — but no one knows for sure.

What is bothersome about DOT’s approach is the agency’s attempt to sell its numbers in order to sell its proposal. Yes, numbers are coin of the realm in political debate, especially in Washington, and DOT must grapple with political reality if it hopes for any success in this matter. As one trucking lobbyist famously pointed out, “He who has the biggest number wins.”

Or maybe it was the “best” number. The best number has more than a ring of veracity to it; it has solid grounding on some factual base. Otherwise, filling the air with numbers to give authenticity to your argument carries a certain risk of being revealed. There’s something powerful about hollowness exposed. It can deflate a political agenda with Ross Perot’s giant sucking sound.

By DOT’s own reckoning, it reviewed more than 150 studies, including many it conducted or paid for, only to pull numbers out of a hat. We don’t think that adds up to good government.