Groups Seek to Cut Driving Time as Part of Changes to HOS Rules

This story appears in the June 28 print edition of Transport Topics.

A coalition of interest groups that has repeatedly succeeded in challenging the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service rule last week pushed for dramatically cutting the current daily and weekly work-time limits.

FMCSA should slash the number of hours a driver could be behind the wheel to eight from the current limit of 11 and increase the daily mandated off-duty period to 12 hours from 10, the groups said June 17.

FMCSA, which has had its HOS rule rejected by federal courts twice after lawsuits by the coalition, has a July 26 deadline for publishing a revised hours rule.

The coalition, which is led by Public Citizen and includes the Teamsters union, made its comments in a filing to the agency’s rulemaking docket.

“The most important thing is that these limits are the ones that are supported by the weight of overwhelming scientific evidence,” said Greg Beck, attorney for Public Citizen. “The evidence shows that after eight hours of driving, the accident rate starts to increase exponentially.”

In addition, the Public Citizen proposal would cap the workday at a maximum of 12 hours, a two-hour cut from the 14-hour workday in the current rule. It also would require drivers using a sleeper berth to spend more than eight consecutive hours in the berth “to expunge sleep debt and recover safe performance.”

Public Citizen, along with Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, Parents Against Tired Truckers, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safe-ty and the Teamsters union, has sued FMCSA several times since 2003 seeking to overturn the driver work rules.

In 2004 and in 2007, the coalition succeeded in getting a federal court to strike down all or some of the hours rule. Last year, facing a third lawsuit over the regulation, FMCSA agreed to review the rule as part of a court settlement.

FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro told Transport Topics June 23 that the agency was “absolutely on schedule with regard to the settlement requirements to have the rule to [the White House] by July 26 of this year.”

As part of its review for a new rule, FMCSA held several public hearings and has invited comment on the regulation. Ferro said the process has produced “a very rich discussion” on the rule and added that “the agency didn’t hold the discussion for naught.”

“Probably no rule they come out with is going to be perfect,” Beck told TT. “They’re going to probably compromise, but the numbers we chose were based on scientific evidence.”

Beck added that by doing things like adding more rest time, or other modifications, “there’s a way you can tweak things . . . to address our concerns.”

However, he warned that if the agency’s final rule is not satisfactory, Public Citizen and the other groups would not hesitate to return to court.

“There’s just so many permutations of how the rule could look, it is really difficult to speculate about how it is going to turn out,” he said. “But we definitely reserve the option that if the rule is not changed we will definitely continue the case.”

Industry executives and law enforcement officials said the proposal was unrealistic and could cripple the trucking industry.

“The first thing that concerns me is the lack of understanding about how this industry operates,” said Dave Osiecki, senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs for American Trucking Associations. “Anybody who understands how the trucking industry operates would be hard-pressed to think that’s a legitimate position.”

Osiecki said the dramatic cutback in hours would lead to “many, many, many more trucks . . . more mileage and more congestion means more risk and more exposure for everyone.”

Beck dismissed that argument, saying there was “no evidence that an increased number of trucks from reduced work hours would increase accidents.”

“What they are proposing would certainly seem reasonable in most [pickup-and-delivery] operations,” said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “But for people that drive over the road would be: Where do we park? Where do we get off the road, where do we get to sleep, because there simply wouldn’t be places?”

In its listening sessions around the country, FMCSA has heard industry representatives, including ATA and OOIDA, push for greater flexibility in the HOS rule, particularly in how drivers may use their sleeper berths to take their off-duty rest breaks.

Steve Keppler, interim executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said “the key issue” in drafting the hours rule “is really a balance between safety and commerce.”

“We want safe drivers and nonfatigued drivers — that’s our first and foremost need — but we also need to understand how the industry operates and ensure that we understand the unintended consequences,” he said.

Keppler added that although the proposal comes from the coalition that has succeeded in the past, he didn’t “see it having any additional weight.”

“At the end of the day, there’s a regulatory process that the agency needs to follow and the proposals will succeed or fail on their merits,” he said.