Hours Rule Meets ‘Groundhog Day’

This Editorial appears in the March 16 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

In a scenario eerily reminiscent of the Bill Murray movie “Groundhog Day,” a coalition of interest groups has again launched a formal legal challenge to the government’s hours-of-service rules for commercial drivers.

These groups last week asked a federal appeals court in Washington to review the regulations, a necessary step before they can ask the court to overturn them.

These groups — the Teamsters union, Public Citizen and others — acted, despite the fact that highway safety has improved since the current hours rule went into effect.

For three straight years, truck-involved fatal crashes have declined, to the lowest levels since the Department of Transportation began keeping these records.

But these groups refuse to credit the improvement in safety to the rule, instead choosing to force the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and others at DOT to spend their energies defending the rules — energies that could be put to better use.

We can only hope that the court sees the words of John Hill, who in January, as FMCSA’s administrator before the arrival of the new executive branch in Washington, rebuffed a petition by these same groups to overturn the rule.

“The significant increase in truck crashes and fatalities that one would have anticipated, based on petitioners’ criticisms [of the driver work and rest hours], has simply failed to occur,” Hill wrote in rejecting the petition.

Hill also noted that this safety improvement occurred at the same time that the rule, which took effect in 2003, followed by some tweaking in 2007, benefited the nation’s trucking fleets by affording them more flexibility in scheduling freight movements.

The rule allows drivers to be behind the wheel for up to 11 hours a day — one more than before — but cuts the allowable workday by one hour, to 14 from 15.

He said that, in addition to saving lives, the hours rule has “significantly increased operational flexibility, to the betterment of drivers’ lifestyles and U.S. consumers.”

In other words, Hill said the HOS rules have been a win-win, with both safety and economics benefiting.

Today, we have a new president and a new transportation secretary, but as yet no replacement FMCSA administrator. Still, the facts don’t change: The new rules work.

And we must hope that the judges who will review the record will do so with clear vision and reaffirm FMCSA’s right to determine what’s best for trucking and the motoring public.