ATA: DOT Ignored Rulemaking Guidelines
American Trucking Associations said the Department of Transportation, in designing its hours-of-service proposal, ignored most of the 62 executive orders and legislative mandates in place to guide the development of sound rulemakings and underestimated the costs to the industry.
DOT’s rules writers either failed to adhere to these directives or, in most cases, “glossed over these requirements or simply ignored them,” ATA said in its formal comments for the DOT docket on hours of service, which closed Dec. 15.
Because the proposal would profoundly affect the way much of trucking operates, its impact deserves a much deeper look than DOT gave to it, ATA said in calling for a comprehensive safety and economic analysis by an independent firm. The trucking federation weighed in last year by commissioning a separate cost-benefit analysis.
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One of the prime directives stipulates that a proposed regulation’s benefits must outweigh its costs. DOT estimated its hours-of-service rules would prevent 2,600 crashes, 115 fatalities and 2,995 serious injuries annually.
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