In The News

EYE ON TRUCKING: It’s time to REALLY settle the HOS issue and shake hands

Word reached the newsroom at The Trucker shortly after 9 a.m. CDT Tuesday.

Something was going on with Hours of Service.

Probably something to do with the recent litigation.

A quick call to Public Citizen, the lead petitioner in the suit, turned up an unposted news release.

A settlement had been reached Monday.

The full release via e-mail was headlined: “Obama administration settles Hours of Service case, agrees to start over on rule to keep tired truckers off the roads.”

The first paragraph read: “The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) today agreed to abandon their defense of unsafe, longer working hour standards for truckers the Bush administration issued in 2003. In a settlement of a lawsuit brought by Public Citizen, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the agencies agreed to start a new round of rulemaking that could result in reduced Hours of Service for truckers.”

Not a pro-active communication about the settlement came from DOT or FMCSA.

We queried those agencies for a response while wondering why they didn’t issue a release of their own because in recent months our e-mail inbox has been full of newsworthy releases from those agencies, and certainly settlement of the lawsuit was newsworthy.

(Of course, we know now that the “settlement” is really not a final settlement.)

It’s only an abeyance and if FMCSA does not do what the petitioners want — drop driving time from 11 to 10 hours and eliminate the 34-hour restart — everyone will be right back in court.)

At any rate, a little more than four hours after word of the settlement reached us, we got the response in the form of a 34-word statement from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.

“Safety is our highest priority at the U. S. Department of Transportation and so we believe that starting over and developing a rule that can help save lives is the smart thing to do,” the secretary said.

Wait a minute, Mr. Secretary, that’s pretty ambiguous wording coming from the highest reaches of government.

That sounds more like a slap at the DOT and the FMCSA from the previous administration.

Could we perhaps reword your statement a bit?

It sounds as though you don’t think the current rule is effective in saving lives.

Did you really mean to say the following?

“We at DOT are committed to safety. We believe the current rule has helped save lives, but in the spirit of continuous improvement and in light of the ongoing pattern of litigation, we felt it was time to review the rule in its entirety and possibly make changes that we believe will prevent even more deaths and put this issue to rest once and for all.”

Or did you mean to say:

“The current rule is ineffective, results in tired truckers being on the road and needs to be scrapped and we need to just start all over.”

Next time, please just cut to the chase.

Oh yes, one other thing.

We wonder if Anne Ferro, who appears only days away from being confirmed as FMCSA administrator, feels as though she’s been thrown under the bus.

The minute she walks in the door, she’s faced with having to start from scratch to rewrite a rule that as president and CEO of the Maryland Motor Truck Association she has supported and defended, a fact that Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., noted when Ferro appeared before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in September.

“Will you recommend to the DOT that the HOS rule be revisited?” Lautenberg asked.

“If confirmed, I am firmly committed to review the data, research and analysis behind the current rule and use that information to advance safety where and if it’s determined improvements are necessary,” Ferro responded.

(And by the way, there has been no overwhelming empirical evidence that either the 11-hour driving or 34-hour restart rule is unsafe.)

Either Ferro knew more than she let on during the hearing or sometime between then and now, LaHood called her with the news that he’d agreed to the settlement.

Whatever the case, Ferro is stepping into the middle of one of the biggest hornet’s nests in the brief history of the FMCSA.

When writing any rule, government agencies are required to consider the issue of economics.

The RIA (regulatory impact analysis) shows that pushing back the driving time to a 10-hour limit and eliminating the 34-hour restart would cost the industry $2.4 billion in lost productivity a year.

Click here to read about the RIA.

In the end, we wonder if the settlement was nothing more than caving in to political pressure.

The labor movement has strong ties with the Obama administration, and the labor movement is strongly opposed to the current HOS rules.

And it is no secret that safety advocacy groups have effectively presented stories about truck-related fatalities and have strong lobbies on Capitol Hill.

Here’s the bottom line:

We stand with the majority of our industry who believe that the 11-hour rule and the 34-hour restart have improved trucking, both from a safety and economic standpoint.

Obviously, the safety advocates disagree.

However, we want this merry-go-round to stop.

So if the new rule reduces the number of hours a trucker can drive, so be it.

If it drops the 34-hour restart, so be it.

Let’s all shake hands and get on with it — and stay out of court.

Lyndon Finney of The Trucker staff can be reached at [email protected] .

www.theTrucker.com