Editorial: This Week, It's Driver Rules
This Editorial appears in the March 14 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Truck drivers get almost as much attention as Donald Trump, even though drivers generally have a sense of decorum and don’t crave the limelight.
No sooner than the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration checks off on an entry-level driver-training rule, the agency — and the Federal Railroad Administration — are beginning work on a sleep apnea rule.
The federal trucking agency had a very busy week, as it also commissioned a study on its Compliance, Safety, Accountability scoring program and reinstalled a version of CSA scores online after taking them down in December.
The actions on drivers, taken individually, are generally fine. The ELDT proposal comes after 30 years of effort to set minimal training standards for new drivers.
And the proposal has a good chance of becoming final in a similar form because it is the result of a negotiated rulemaking process, where people with a wide range of trucking experiences were placed together and told to iron out their differences.
We would have preferred more of a performance-based examination rather than a strict call for 30 hours of behind-the-wheel training, but there is more good here than bad. Front-loading the industry input into the process was a good thing in this case, and negotiated rulemaking should remain as an option for writers of regulations.
Sleep apnea research also is a worthy pursuit. There are instances when apnea sufferers alternate between snoozing and strangulation. Over a prolonged period, this herky-jerky sleep pattern can ruin a person’s concentration. That’s bad, and especially for people operating trucks or trains.
As always, though, recognizing a problem is one thing and crafting a sensible rule is another.
That said, the cumulative effect of this week’s worth of activity, and many others like it, is worrisome. Motor carrier executives and drivers ultimately are in business to transport goods safely, quickly and efficiently.
That’s an easy sentence to write but a tremendously difficult challenge to execute every day of the year and over many years.
It seems there is always a wave of new proposals, final rules and then legislation and litigation crashing on the doorsteps of the nation’s motor carriers.
Trucking people should not all have to be lawyers, in addition to the talents they already bring to their jobs.
Regulation is obviously not going away, but we urge Congress and the White House Office of Management and Budget to consider a burden of proof where new rules are written modestly and adopted out of necessity rather than any decent idea that rolls down the road.
