Editorial: The HOS Restart Study
On the surface, it would appear the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s announcement last week that it had exceeded its goal of recruiting more than 225 truck drivers to participate in the hours-of-service restart study would be a positive development.
Opposing sides continue to have different views as to how the HOS restart changes implemented by the agency in July 2013 have affected highway safety. As Transport Topics has documented, there was enough concern that Congress saw fit to suspend the provision as part of its fiscal 2015 funding bill signed into law in December.
That legislation ordered FMCSA to conduct the study to assess the safety benefits of the restart changes, which required truck drivers take off two consecutive periods of 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., adding more traffic during peak congestion periods.
It has taken the agency quite a while to get the right mix of drivers. We witnessed agency officials actively recruiting drivers for the study during the Mid-America Trucking Show in March.
From the outset, FMCSA had said the study would take five months, which has raised some question about what would happen when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30 and there is no report to Congress on the restart study. During April, FMCSA said it hoped to finish the study before the end of the calendar year.
If last week is any indication, it appears likely the restart changes still will be suspended come October.
Even before the study could get off the ground, Rep. Richard Hanna was questioning whether FMCSA will be able to reach a fair conclusion.
Speaking at an April 29 hearing, he criticized the agency for hiring the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to oversee the study. That is the same group that conducted a separate HOS study in 2011 that was not well-received.
His comments came as a House appropriations bill advanced that would prevent the suspended 34-hour restart rule from being reinstated unless the study demonstrates “statistically significant improvement in all outcomes related to safety, operator fatigue, driver health and longevity, and work schedules” compared with drivers not operating under the restart.
Neither of these developments appears to show there is much confidence in FMCSA’s decision-making on this issue in Congress.
Combined with new research from the American Transportation Research Institute showing an increase in truck crashes after the July 2013 rule change, it becomes that much more difficult to see how FMCSA’s study will lead to a reversal of the current restart rule.
