ATA petitions regulators to retain HOS as is

ARLINGTON, Va. – The American Trucking Associations is anticipating “widespread disruption in the industry and the supply chain,” if a court decision to throw out the 11-hour daily driving limit and 34-hour restart provisions of the federal hours-of-service rules takes effect.

The ATA has submitted a petition asking the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to retain the two provisions by establishing “a firm, expedited notice of proposed rulemaking process” for addressing the issues identified by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The petition asks the agency to publish an Interim Final Rule by Sept. 14 to re-adopt the 11-hour driving limit and 34-hour restart. Within 60 days after that, FMCSA should publish a proposed rulemaking that addresses the issues identified by the court, and then publish a final rule within 180 days.

“There is no compelling safety reason for these two elements of the rule to be vacated,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves recently noted in a letter to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters.

Contrary to the claims of special interest groups, the Court’s decision did not state that the two elements were unsafe, but merely that the FMCSA had not followed required procedures in developing those parts of the rule, ATA points out.

ATA says critics of the rules have fixated on the one additional hour of driving that was allowed when FMCSA upgraded its rules in 2003, and fail to note that the same version of the rules increased drivers’ required daily rest period from 8 hours to 10 hours and reduced the maximum on-duty period from 15 hours per day to 14 hours per day. Under the rules truck drivers could be assured of more rest time each day than under the previous rules.

“It will be impossible for the trucking industry to adapt to immediate changes in the daily driving limit and restart provisions without significant and costly impacts upon carriers’ operations,” ATA states. Additionally, the inability of many states to immediately adapt to the new requirements will result in a patchwork of enforcement, which could undermine the agency’s safety efforts.

A decline in fatalities in truck-involved crashes in 2006 demonstrates that continuation of these provisions will not degrade highway safety, ATA adds. The 4.7 percent decline in 2006 was the largest drop in 14 years.