ATA testifies in support of reissued HOS rule

WASHINGTON — The American Trucking Associations will testify before a Senate Subcommittee that it supports the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s recent Interim Final Rule on driver’s hours of service.

The interim rule retains key components of the 2004 truck driver work and rest rules — including the 11 hours daily driving and 34-hour restart provisions — which ATA claims have contributed to improved safety on the nation’s highways.

Echoing statements made by FMCSA, ATA Vice President of Safety, Security and Operations Dave Osiecki will testify that in just four years, the current rules have contributed to significant decreases in the number of fatal large truck crashes, the fatal large truck crash rate, the number of injuries from truck involved-crashes, and the injury crash rate.

Osiecki will testify before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Merchant Marine Safety, and Security and Infrastructure of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

He said the current HOS rules represented a “balanced set of rules” that promote driver alertness through natural work and rest cycles while providing the industry with operational flexibility. “ATA supports the new hours of service rules because they are working,” Osiecki said.

In its interim final rule, the FMCSA cited data collected by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute that showed there is no increase in crash risk in the 11th hour of driving. Government and industry safety data and metrics clearly indicate that the current HOS rules are an improvement in truck safety over the pre-2004 rules. For example:

The projected truck-involved fatal crash rate for 2006 is 1.94 fatal crashes per 100 million vehicle miles of travel. This is at its lowest point since the U.S. Department of Transportation began keeping these records in 1975.

Also, the number of truck-involved fatalities decreased 4.7 percent in 2006 – from 5,240 in 2005 to 4,995 in 2006 — the largest percentage drop in truck-involved fatalities since 1992. And the number of truck-involved-crash injuries decreased by almost 2,000 in 2005 and dropped another 8,000 in 2006, while the he injury crash rate, another accepted metric, is also at its lowest point since DOT recordkeeping began.