Public Citizen Leads New Challenge to HOS Rule
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the Dec. 22 & 29 print edition of Transport Topics.
A coalition of advocacy and labor groups last week again challenged the revised driver hours-of-service rule, asking the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to reconsider provisions in the rule that allow truckers to drive 11 hours in a workday and reset their weekly hour limit by taking 34 hours off.
In its Dec. 18 filing, the group, led by Public Citizen, said FMCSA relied on “inadequate research findings and crash data to justify its determination to readopt the 11-hour driving shift and 34-hour restart.”
Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and Public Citizen were joined by the Teamsters union and the Truck Safety Coalition. It was the third time the groups have challenged FMCSA’s hours rule.
“FMCSA simply disregarded scores of studies conducted over more than 30 years showing this incredibly demanding working and driving schedule will lead to exhausted truck drivers who literally can fall asleep at the wheels of their rigs,” said Jacqueline Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
Clayton Boyce, 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. Scientific studies of safety records have shown the current rule is safe,” 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,” Boyce said.
In 2003, FMCSA issued its first revision of driver hours in more than six decades, increasing the daily limit on driving hours to 11 from 10 and forcing drivers to take 10 hours off-duty between work periods instead of eight. The new rule also decreased the amount of time a driver could work each day to 14 hours from 15 hours.
The coalition succeeded in having a federal court overturn the rule in 2004 for failing to consider driver health. The agency reissued its rule in 2005, but the courts rejected the provisions of the rule increasing the driving time and allowing drivers to reset their weekly hour allotments with a 34-hour rest in 2007.
In November, FMCSA published its final rule, maintaining both the 11th hour of driving and the 34-hour restart.
The coalition cited previous court rulings as a reason FMCSA should reverse its rule, saying that the agency’s third effort is “unlikely to fare any better than its first two.”
Public Citizen said previously it hopes the Obama administration and Congress will take a look at reversing the regulation next year once it takes over. Congressional aides have said they expect the hours issue to be discussed next year as part of the debate over reauthorization.
However, Bonnie Robin-Vergeer, attorney for Public Citizen, told Transport Topics that the advocacy group “hope[s] the current administration will seriously consider the petition now.”
A spokeswoman for FMCSA declined to comment.
