Court Rejects Hours-of-Service Rule
FMCSA Faulted Over Longer Driving Hours
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the July 30 print edition of Transport Topics.
A federal appeals court last week struck down key provisions of the government’s latest commercial driver work rules, the second time in three years the court has rejected the Department of Transportation’s attempts to rewrite the original, 68-year-old regulations.
The court said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration violated federal law in the way it increased the maximum allowable driving time to 11 hours from 10 and allowed drivers to reset their weekly hours limit by taking 34 straight hours off.
The July 24 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the rule’s restriction on how drivers may split time in their sleeper berth.
FMCSA’s “failure to disclose the methodology” it used to add the 11th hour of driving and the 34-hour restart in time to take public comment was “prejudicial,” Judge Merrick Garland wrote for the court, which also said “FMCSA failed to provide an adequate explanation for its decision to adopt the 11-hour daily driving limit and the 34-hour restart provision.”
The three-judge panel also included Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg and Judge Karen Henderson and ruled unanimously in favor of a group challenging the rule, led by Public Citizen.
In 2004, a different panel of judges from the same court rejected an earlier revision, saying FMCSA had not considered driver health. In its decision last week, the court stopped short of ruling on the driver health issue after finding the agency had violated federal administrative procedures.
Last week, the court also rejected an appeal by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association that sought flexibility in the sleeper-berth provision and contended that FMCSA ignored the law by not considering the effects of loading and unloading freight.
The rule in question requires drivers to rest for 10 hours after a 14-hour workday and that at least eight hours must be in one period. OOIDA wanted to be able to split the 10-hour rest period into fairly equal portions.
“Although OOIDA may have preferred FMCSA deal with the problem[s] in a different manner, the statute does not mandate that the agency reach any particular substantive result,” the court said.
The court upheld Public Citizen’s challenge to the added hour of driving time and the 34-hour restart provision.
“We conclude both that FMCSA failed to provide an opportunity for comment on the methodology of its operator-fatigue model, and that it failed to provide an explanation for the elements of that methodology that Public Citizen disputes,” Garland wrote. “Because the model is the basis for the cost-benefit analysis that led FMCSA to adopt the two provisions . . . we must vacate those provisions.”
The decision sparked concern within the trucking industry and FMCSA, while advocacy and labor groups claimed a victory over the agency.
FMCSA said it was “analyzing the decision . . . to understand the court’s findings, as well as determine the agency’s next steps.”
American Trucking Associations said it would seek a stay from the court “until the [FMCSA] provides the court with explanations for two of the rule’s provisions.”
“ATA believes the existing rules have proven to be a significant improvement over the old rules, in terms of reducing driver fatigue and related incidents,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement.
“It was kind of bad news all the way around,” said Chris Burruss, president of the Truckload Carriers Association. “However, it may not be as bad as the decision sounds; since the court’s ruling appears more procedural in nature, it’s possible that FMCSA could go back and redo the existing rule.”
Rick Schweitzer, general counsel for the National Private Truck Council, told Transport Topics, “FMCSA is going to have to come up with some sort of replacement rules,” because, he said, he believes that vacating the 11th driving hour and 34-hour restart provisions does not reinstate the old rules.
Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, called the decision “unfortunate.”
“The reality is, the court can’t possibly be informed and aware of the realities of the road for drivers,” he said.
Teamsters union President James Hoffa said he hoped the ruling “forces the Bush administration to start paying attention to highway safety.”
“This is the second time that a unanimous panel of the D.C. Circuit, totaling six different judges, has found that the agency failed to justify the rule’s increases in daily and weekly driving and working hours,” said Public Citizen attorney Bonnie Robin-Vergeer.
In 2004, Public Citizen successfully argued that FMCSA did not fully consider driver health when it issued its first revision of the rule since the 1930s (7-26-04, p. 1).
That revision extended maximum allowed driving time to 11 from 10 hours, cutting the work period to 14 consecutive hours from 15 hours, which included clocking on and off duty.
Congress gave FMCSA one year to revise the rule after the earlier court rejection, and the agency’s 2005 revision — which the decision last week partially vacated — was substantively the same as the 2003 rule, except that it did away with the split sleeper-berth practice.
This story appears in the July 30 print edition of Transport Topics.
A federal appeals court last week struck down key provisions of the government’s latest commercial driver work rules, the second time in three years the court has rejected the Department of Transportation’s attempts to rewrite the original, 68-year-old regulations.
The court said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration violated federal law in the way it increased the maximum allowable driving time to 11 hours from 10 and allowed drivers to reset their weekly hours limit by taking 34 straight hours off.
The July 24 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the rule’s restriction on how drivers may split time in their sleeper berth.
FMCSA’s “failure to disclose the methodology” it used to add the 11th hour of driving and the 34-hour restart in time to take public comment was “prejudicial,” Judge Merrick Garland wrote for the court, which also said “FMCSA failed to provide an adequate explanation for its decision to adopt the 11-hour daily driving limit and the 34-hour restart provision.”
The three-judge panel also included Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg and Judge Karen Henderson and ruled unanimously in favor of a group challenging the rule, led by Public Citizen.
In 2004, a different panel of judges from the same court rejected an earlier revision, saying FMCSA had not considered driver health. In its decision last week, the court stopped short of ruling on the driver health issue after finding the agency had violated federal administrative procedures.
Last week, the court also rejected an appeal by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association that sought flexibility in the sleeper-berth provision and contended that FMCSA ignored the law by not considering the effects of loading and unloading freight.
The rule in question requires drivers to rest for 10 hours after a 14-hour workday and that at least eight hours must be in one period. OOIDA wanted to be able to split the 10-hour rest period into fairly equal portions.
“Although OOIDA may have preferred FMCSA deal with the problem[s] in a different manner, the statute does not mandate that the agency reach any particular substantive result,” the court said.
The court upheld Public Citizen’s challenge to the added hour of driving time and the 34-hour restart provision.
“We conclude both that FMCSA failed to provide an opportunity for comment on the methodology of its operator-fatigue model, and that it failed to provide an explanation for the elements of that methodology that Public Citizen disputes,” Garland wrote. “Because the model is the basis for the cost-benefit analysis that led FMCSA to adopt the two provisions . . . we must vacate those provisions.”
The decision sparked concern within the trucking industry and FMCSA, while advocacy and labor groups claimed a victory over the agency.
FMCSA said it was “analyzing the decision . . . to understand the court’s findings, as well as determine the agency’s next steps.”
American Trucking Associations said it would seek a stay from the court “until the [FMCSA] provides the court with explanations for two of the rule’s provisions.”
“ATA believes the existing rules have proven to be a significant improvement over the old rules, in terms of reducing driver fatigue and related incidents,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement.
“It was kind of bad news all the way around,” said Chris Burruss, president of the Truckload Carriers Association. “However, it may not be as bad as the decision sounds; since the court’s ruling appears more procedural in nature, it’s possible that FMCSA could go back and redo the existing rule.”
Rick Schweitzer, general counsel for the National Private Truck Council, told Transport Topics, “FMCSA is going to have to come up with some sort of replacement rules,” because, he said, he believes that vacating the 11th driving hour and 34-hour restart provisions does not reinstate the old rules.
Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, called the decision “unfortunate.”
“The reality is, the court can’t possibly be informed and aware of the realities of the road for drivers,” he said.
Teamsters union President James Hoffa said he hoped the ruling “forces the Bush administration to start paying attention to highway safety.”
“This is the second time that a unanimous panel of the D.C. Circuit, totaling six different judges, has found that the agency failed to justify the rule’s increases in daily and weekly driving and working hours,” said Public Citizen attorney Bonnie Robin-Vergeer.
In 2004, Public Citizen successfully argued that FMCSA did not fully consider driver health when it issued its first revision of the rule since the 1930s (7-26-04, p. 1).
That revision extended maximum allowed driving time to 11 from 10 hours, cutting the work period to 14 consecutive hours from 15 hours, which included clocking on and off duty.
Congress gave FMCSA one year to revise the rule after the earlier court rejection, and the agency’s 2005 revision — which the decision last week partially vacated — was substantively the same as the 2003 rule, except that it did away with the split sleeper-berth practice.
