Lawmakers Ask FMCSA to Keep Current Hours-of-Service Rule

By Rip Watson, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the March 7 print edition of Transport Topics.

Efforts to block changes in hours-of-service proposed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gained steam last week as the closing of the agency’s comment period on the proposal approached.

The comments included letters signed by 122 members of the House of Representatives and 23 senators urging FMCSA to maintain the current rules. Also, American Trucking Associations released a statement saying that FMCSA misrepresented the findings of a fatigue expert whose analysis was used to justify the proposed changes.

As Transport Topics went to press on March 3, about 11,000 comments had been received, many of them from individual drivers and fleets that urged FMCSA not to impose changes that would add mandatory rest times and cut the maximum driving time to 10 hours from the current 11. The comment period closed on March 4.

“If the proposed changes are put in place, companies will be forced to increase the number of trucks on the road necessary for delivering the same amount of freight, adding to final product costs and increasing congestion on our nation’s highways,” said the letters signed primarily by Republicans and released by ATA.

Both congressional letters noted substantial improvements in truck safety that led to the lowest-ever rate of fatal and injury accidents involving large trucks. They also stressed the challenges law enforcement will have to accurately identify violations under the complex proposal released late last year.

Among the signatories of the House letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.). Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members such as Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Rep. Thomas Petri (R-Wis.) also signed the letter, but other leaders such as Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) did not.

On the Senate side, all of those who signed were Republicans.

The list included prominent senators such as Charles Grassley of Iowa, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“It is increasingly clear that this proposal is the result of political pressure and not a fair interpretation of trucking’s safety record,” American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said in a March 2 statement.

At press time, groups such as Public Citizen that challenged the 2003 rule and forced the FMCSA to write a new proposal hadn’t yet submitted their comments. Allies of Public Citizen on the issue such as Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and the Teamsters union also hadn’t made their submissions.

During a Feb. 17 FMCSA listening session, Henry Jasny, general counsel for Advocates, said, “The proposed changes will make highways safer, and reduce truck driver fatigue by limiting the excessively long hours driven by some drivers.”

Speaking also for Public Citizen, Jasny observed that auto safety has improved at a faster pace than trucking safety. During that appearance, he said the agency’s HOS proposal is a step “in the right direction.”

However, on the research front, ATA released statements from Dr. Francesco Cappuccio, a physician and professor at a British medical school who co-authored a 2007 study cited by FMCSA to justify its proposed changes.

His 10-page report, released by ATA, stated that the research, including his review of 16 academic studies of sleep length, quality and mortality, can’t be used to justify the estimated $690 million in benefits cited by FMCSA.

The evidence doesn’t support the FMCSA’s conclusions that adding even a few minutes of sleep will reduce the risk of mortality, he said.

In addition, he said there was “no evidence to prove, that without additional measures, a simple reduction in work hours will result in increased sleep time.”

Commenting on the medical study, Graves said, “The fact that this prominent physician and sleep researcher clearly states the agency is wrong to use his and others work in this way clearly exposes the serious flaws in this proposal.”

Asked for comment on Cappuccio’s report, FMCSA spokeswoman Candice Tolliver said its proposal “specifically asks for the public to provide robust feedback, comments and questions about the various components of the proposal.

“The agency looks forward to receiving all public comments and addressing them in the final rule,” she said.