In The News

FMCSA takes ‘interim’ tag off HOS rule

By now everyone knows that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Interim Final Rule has had the “interim” tag removed.

Since there have been two other rules written during the past five years, we guess this one will be called the 2008 HOS rule, taking a seat alongside the 2003 HOS rule and the 2005 HOS rule.

Yes, Virginia, the 11 hours of driving and the 34-hour restart provision have been retained.

And yes again, Virginia, we checked and there are a couple of more empty seats for the two thousand and whatever rule that is likely to follow.

No doubt those safety groups have either filed suit or are in the process of doing so, and who knows what the new Administration might do with the 2008 rule?

Earlier this year, four groups — Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Public Citizen and the Truck Safety Coalition — filed an 88-page response to FMCSA’s request for comments on the Interim Final Rule on HOS, a rule that was put in place following a second lawsuit against the second post-2003 HOS rule.

(Gets sort of confusing doesn’t it? We can only imagine how all those drivers out there on the road feel trying to keep up with the latest version.)

The groups state their position on the very first page:

“FMCSA has no data or credible scientific research that supports allowing truck drivers, already fatigued even under the short HOS of the pre-2003 rule, to drive and work far longer hours than ever before. In contrast, there is a large body of research findings which show that very long work and driving hours impose a severe cost in terms of driver fatigue not only by increasing the risk of crashes, but also by exacting a heavy toll on drivers’ health.

Because of the danger posed by these new HOS provisions to highway safety and truck driver health, safety organizations litigated the arbitrary and capricious nature of the HOS final rules first issued in 2003 and again in 2005.”

We agree that the longer you work at any job on any given day, the more tired you become, but the statistics simply don’t bear out any real reason for an all-out assault on the 11th hour of driving.

The Trucks Involved in Fatal Accidents (TIFA) report showed that 17 fatal accidents occurred in the 11th hour of driving in 2006, the latest year for which TIFA data available. That compares with 13 in 2005 and 16 in 2004. (See article on Page 8).

Each of those years, the percentage of fatal accidents that have occurred in the 11th hour has been about three-tenths of 1 percent of the total.

Now we’re told by safety directors at some of the larger motor carriers that many of their drivers never drive in the 11th hour, and when they do, they use only a portion of that hour.

So we would agree with those who say the risk of being involved in a fatal accident in the 11th hour is higher, but the numbers simply don’t justify the outcry over 11 hours of driving time.

Don’t get us wrong.

One death is one too many, but let’s put our efforts on an area that would have a bigger impact on saving lives.

Perhaps one of those areas is coming up with some measure to determine at what point in a driver’s week fatal accidents occur.

By that we mean did it occur in hour 20 of a 60-hour driving week, or hour 35 or hour 50?

We recently interviewed Dr. Allan Pack, director of sleep and respiratory neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania, on the subject of sleep deprivation.

During the interview, the topic of cumulative sleep deprivation came up, and Dr. Pack was quick to point out that you could not necessarily “catch up” in one night.

We would hazard a guess that not many truckers get a “good night’s sleep” every night on the road, so it’s very likely that toward the end of a week on the road, the risk of being involved in an accident goes up considerably.

But no data exists to help us answer that question.

What does exist, however, is data to show that the long-haul driver population is aging (see chart on Page 8), and we know from experience, the older we get, the more rest we require.

We know this is radical, but perhaps the answer is decreasing the number of hours a day a trucker can drive the further he or she gets into a 60- or 70-hour work week.

(Wouldn’t that one be tough to regulate?)

Finally, we would suspect that the most valid argument against longer driving hours is the health issue.

Most of us yelp and holler if we have to work more than eight hours a day.

If we get tired, we can lean back in our chair, close our eyes and relax for a minute.

Try that in a big rig rumbling down the road at 65 mph and see what happens.

Yet the law allows a driver to actually work 14 hours a day, and we suspect many of you do.

Perhaps a real, in-depth study on driver health and the 14-hour on-duty day is long overdue.

Stay tuned.

The Final Rule will likely be challenged.

We believe we’re a long, long way from a real Final Rule.