‘Fixing’ the Unbroken

OK, now we’ve said it again: Leave the current hours-of-service rule alone because it has proven its value for promoting safety while allowing the freight transportation industry to continue moving the nation’s freight.

Unfortunately, we have to be concerned that if Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officials haven’t already recognized just how well the HOS rule is working, that nothing we or others say will open their eyes.

Truck-involved highway fatalities have set record lows the past two years under the HOS rule, and the trucking industry has successfully managed to deal with most of the provisions in the rule that complicated freight movements.

That the Department of Transportation even agreed to reopen the debate over the rule was disappointing, but as we’ve said before, we understand that it was part of a quid pro quo with certain political factions in order to get FMCSA’s new leadership through the Senate confirmation process.

But the mountain of comments submitted to FMCSA between the time the rule changes were proposed by DOT and last week’s “listening session,” and the parade of witnesses at that event should have been enough to convince FMCSA that it must keep its hands off its proven rule.

As Dave Osiecki, American Trucking Associations’ senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, told FMCSA at the session: “Policy changes must be based on sound research and data, not pressure or politics. The proposed HOS changes do not pass the test on any of these principles.”

While FMCSA has claimed that the new rule would provide some $380 million a year in benefits, an independent research firm hired by ATA found that the new proposal actually would cost at least $320 million a year more than it would save. This means that FMCSA has overstated the value of the proposal by some $700 million a year.

At the same time, the agency has ignored the sharp improvement in safety detailed in data collected by DOT.

ATA President Bill Graves properly explained the situation earlier, stating that the FMCSA proposal “isn’t rooted in sound science, good data or logic and can’t stand up to scrutiny. . . . As proposed, the new HOS rule would impose significant costs on the trucking industry without improving safety. These rules are a cure for a disease that we don’t have.”