Ferro Again Defends Rule’s Safety Benefit

This story appears in the June 9 print edition of Transport Topics.

The head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration told a Senate panel her agency knew last year’s hours-of-service rule changes would affect trucking’s productivity and that she expects there to be a large amount of data showing it is increasing safety.

Anne Ferro said that once the mandate requiring electronic logging devices is implemented, there will be abundant data on all aspects of the HOS rule.

“This proposal will improve hours-of-service compliance and, hence, the uniform use of those logs will actually improve and mitigate the impact of fatigue-related driving and fatigue-related crashes,” she said at a June 3 hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

She testified two days before a Senate panel approved a proposal to suspend the 34-hour restart provision in the HOS rule for one year.

Under questioning about the restart provision, Ferro said she recognizes some trucking sectors had to make adjustments in order to comply but that the industry overall is currently hitting profitability levels never seen before.

Bob Costello, chief economist for American Trucking Associations, said Ferro was incorrect in her remarks.

It’s true that 2013 saw trucking’s highest “revenue level” on record, Costello said, but when he tracked quarterly profit margins back to 2003, a different picture emerged.

“I looked at the average profit margins of publicly traded truckload

carriers pre-recession and post-recession, and they have been lower post-recession than they were pre-recession,” he said.

The 34-hour restart provision effectively requires drivers to take two consecutive days of rest before starting a new workweek.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) questioned Ferro about whether the requirements are enhancing safety.

“My question simply to you is, under this rule, we are going to have more drivers driving during daytime hours, isn’t that true?” Ayotte asked, citing an FMCSA study.

“That will be part of what we will continue to analyze, going forward,” Ferro responded. “We have not seen that.”

She said the effect on nighttime versus daytime driving is “incremental,” the study found, and that “in the mix of all the commercial traffic that starts early mornings across our country, we think the impact is far outweighed by the improved safety.”

The study, done with 106 truckers, found that drivers affected by the new restart rule are primarily nighttime drivers.

An American Transportation Research Institute analysis of the study said the findings showed that a driver “was likely to be driving primarily at night,” when he or she had only one nighttime break, as was the custom under the old restart rule.

Ayotte questioned whether the study’s sample was large enough, something the ATRI analysis also questioned. Ferro said the study was the largest of its kind ever done in the commercial trucking arena.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the committee’s ranking member, asked Ferro for an update on FMCSA’s response to two independent analyses that found shortcomings in the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability rating program.

Ferro said that FMCSA has responded to all the points raised in the two reports and is making “full use” of the recommendations from the Government Accountability Office and the Inspector General.

She also said that the one point of contention left between GAO and FMCSA is over methodology, with GAO suggesting that the agency narrow its data collection by concentrating on large carrier incidents.

“While large carriers have a significant impact on crash activity across our country,” Ferro said, “smaller carriers impact about half of those fatalities and injury crashes, so it’s important that we look at the full spectrum.”

The hearing was held in connection with the proposed transportation reauthorization bill and explored how safety issues are handled by the various agencies within the Department of Transportation, including  the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

PHMSA has been under fire about its oversight of Bakken crude oil shipments after a series of train incidents the past year in which rail tank cars have derailed and exploded.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pressed PHMSA Administrator Cynthia Quarterman about the agency’s pending rail safety rule.

Klobuchar said that of about 92,000 oil tank cars, known as DOT-111s, being used in the United States, only 14,000 meet federal safety standards.

“Considering the large number of DOT-111s in the fleet, is PHMSA considering different rules on what product is being shipped?” Klobuchar asked Quarterman.

The administrator said the proposed rule represents a “comprehensive approach to rail safety.”