Groups File with FMCSA Against Hours-of-Service Rules
A coalition of advocacy groups including Public Citizen and the Teamsters union has asked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to reconsider key provisions of its controversial hours-of-service rule.
In a formal petition filed Thursday, the group said it was challenging the regulation because of “FMCSA’s reliance on inadequate research findings and crash data to justify its determination to readopt the 11-hour driving shift and 34-hour restart.”
Public Citizen was joined by the Teamsters, the Truck Safety Coalition and the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety in their action, the third time the groups have challenged FMCSA over its truck driver hours-of-service rule.
Clayton Boyce, a spokesman for American Trucking Associations, dismissed the challenge to the rules as “unsupported and ill-timed.”
“The current rule was designed to complement the human body’s 24-hour circadian rhythm, and while the rule has been in effect, large truck crash rates, injury rates and death rates have fallen to all-time lows,” Boyce said. “Scientific studies of safety records have shown the current rule is safe.”
FMCSA said last month it would keep in place the rule as is, which allows truckers to drive 11 hours in a workday and reset their weekly hour limits by taking 34 hours off.
Jacqueline Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said that in writing the rule, FMCSA “simply disregarded scores of studies” outlining the dangers of the 11th hour of driving and the 34-hour restart.
ATA’s Boyce said, “Opponents of the rule, for political and business reasons, have made misleading statements such as, ‘The rule lengthens the work day,’ when it actually shortens it; and ‘The rule allows trucking companies to force drivers to drive when fatigued,’ when this is illegal and has been since 1982.”
FMCSA first tried to revise the rule in 2003, but has had its revisions overturned twice by the courts. Public Citizen said in a statement that the agency’s “third effort is unlikely to fare any better than its first two.”
