FMCSA Reissues Hours-of-Service Rule

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Nov. 24 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last week published its latest version of changes to the 60-year-old regulation governing commercial driver work rules.

The agency chose to leave the hours-of-service rules unchanged from previous versions, despite two previous court setbacks and the threat of new litigation.

“After FMCSA conducted additional analysis and carefully reviewed hundreds of comments, the agency found no justification to change the rules,” FMCSA Administrator John Hill told reporters Nov. 18.

The agency, in a rule published Nov. 19, said it would maintain controversial provisions allowing truckers to drive 11 hours per day and to reset their weekly allotment of driving hours by taking 34 straight hours off-duty.

A federal appeals court last year rejected FMCSA’s previous revisions, saying the agency had not justified the one-hour driving extension and 34-hour reset.

Hill said that the final rule, set to take effect Jan. 19, addresses the concerns raised in 2007 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He also said FMCSA would soon issue a rule on electronic onboard data recorders.

“The agency’s data and safety analysis makes clear that this rule will continue to maintain highway safety by ensuring that drivers are rested and ready to work, while continuing to provide operational flexibility to the industry.”

Hill said the court’s concerns were “procedural . . . related to FMCSA’s adoption of the 11-hour driving limit and the 34-hour restart, but not really with their substance.”

Hill said that since 2004, when the 11th hour of driving and the restart provision went into effect, trucking’s safety record has been “at the proper level,” citing a downward trend in the large-truck fatal crash rate.

Hill also said the costs to industry of changing the rule outstripped the potential safety benefits of cutting drivers’ hours.

“Economic analysis for the . . . final rule indicates that elimination of the 11th daily driving hour and 34-hour restart provisions would result in an annual industry cost of $2.4 billion, which far exceeds the safety benefits of $214 million from eliminating [them],” Hill said.

Many in the trucking industry said that FMCSA’s decision had been expected.

Dave Osiecki, director of safety, security and operations for American Trucking Associations, said, “The rules have been in place since January 2004, and for the last five years, the trucking industry’s safety performance has markedly improved. . . . It is hard to understand why so-called ‘safety advocacy’ groups aren’t satisfied with the rules. They are working.”

Steve Keppler, director of policy and programs for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, told Transport Topics that he had anticipated FMCSA would keep the rule unchanged, after “seeing what the anecdotal experience has been with the industry, in terms of the crash reductions and injury reductions.”

Advocacy groups said they continued to oppose the rule and were considering another legal challenge.

“At this point, in the 11th hour of the Bush administration, we weren’t holding out much hope that FMCSA would suddenly change course and do the right thing when it comes to limiting the number of hours truckers may spend behind the wheel,” Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook stated.

Joe Newman, spokesman for the group, said Public Citizen was “still evaluating our options.”

Teamster President James Hoffa said the union was considering legal action, “especially since the court threw out this regulation twice.”

In 2004, a coalition led by Public Citizen and the Teamsters successfully had the rule overturned, but FMCSA reissued the same basic rule with a few minor modifications to sleeper-berth provisions in 2005. The court then rejected the 11th hour and the 34-hour restart provisions of that rule in 2007.

Before 2004, drivers were limited to 10 hours of driving in a 15-hour workday and were required to take eight hours off. FMCSA’s revisions extended the allowable driving time, restricted the workday to 14 consecutive hours and increased the minimum rest period to 10 hours.

Hill said FMCSA needed to move beyond the hours issue to address other trucking safety concerns.

“It is important to reduce all types of large truck crashes, not just those involving fatigue,” he said. “Therefore, we must apply our limited resources to where the greatest safety gains can be made, such as wider deployment of new safety technologies that research shows will help prevent an estimated 20% to 33% of large truck crashes.”

Hill said only “approximately 7%” of truck crashes are fatigue-related.

The agency also was aiming to publish a new rule on electronic onboard recorders for monitoring driver hours, he said.

“It is a very important element to our hours-of-service enforcement strategy and compliance strategy, and I look forward to it going out sometime later this year,” he said.

The EOBR rule was sent to the White House for review Nov. 18, and officials have said it is likely to be fast-tracked, as was the hours of service rule, which the Office of Management and Budget approved in just 24 days, rather than the customary 90 days.