WASHINGTON — The new Hours of Service regulations were announced in a news conference Aug. 19 and for most people involved in long-haul trucking there will be little if any change noticed by them.
For example, there will be no Electronic On-board Recorders required with the new rule, the same as it was with the rule that went into effect in January 2004. The two major changes involve sleeper-berth provisions for long-haul truckers and provisions for short-haul truckers.
The sleeper berth provision no longer allows a driver to split the time. Of the total 10 hours a day that is required off-duty, eight of those hours must occur consecutively in the sleeper berth. Drivers are no longer allowed to split that time with a minimum of two hours.
The news conference was held by Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Annette Sandberg.
The rule becomes effective Oct. 1. Sandberg said an interim period will begin on that day and will end on Dec. 1 to give personnel time to adjust and revise materials related to the changes.
During the transitional period, FMCSA and state law enforcement will monitor carriers for egregious violations of the new rule and pursue enforcement action where necessary, Sandberg said.
Materials regarding the new rule will be available at truck stops and trade shows.
“The research shows that this new rule will improve driver health and safety and the safety of our roadways,” said Sandberg. “Ensuring drivers obtain necessary rest and restorative sleep will save lives.”
“Studies show that drivers are less likely to be fatigued if they take a single, eight-hour block of rest than if they break their rest into smaller periods of time as they were allowed under the previous rule [the rule in effect for most of 2005],” Sandberg said.
The rules currently in effect were thrown out by an appeals court which called the rules “arbitrary and capricious” and that they failed to take drivers’ health into consideration.
With the minimal amount of change involved in the new HOS, Sandberg was asked by someone in the media if she thought this would bring another challenge in the courts. She said she couldn’t guess on what would happen in the courts. Half of the rule, which is almost 400 pages long, addresses driver health, she said, adding that “we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the court.”
Sandberg estimates that only 5.5 percent of fatalities involving large trucks are attributed to fatigue. The other 94.5 percent are addressed using other safety measures. Data is not yet complete on what effect the new rule had on fatigue related deaths in 2004, according to Sandberg.
The new rule regarding sleeper berth time is effective for both individual drivers and those who drive team.
This is what the rules are:
• Commercial Motor Vehicle drivers may drive 11 hours after 10 hours off-duty time
• CMV drivers may not drive beyond the 14th hour after coming on duty, following 10 hours off-duty
• CMV drivers may not drive after 60/70 hours on duty in 7/8 consecutive days
• CMV drivers may restart the 7/8 consecutive day period after taking 34 or more consecutive hours off-duty.
“This new rule will help keep drivers healthy and make our roads safer,” said Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta. “Drivers that are well rested are less likely to lose control, crash, or injure others.”
The current rules were vacated by the court on “driver health and driver health only,” Sandberg said. She said that while officials at FMCSA feel they provided enough scientific evidence for the rules that were thrown out, they have added even more proof from additional studies for these new rules.
The other change now allows short-haul operators not required to hold a CDL, like landscape crews and delivery drivers who work within a 150-mile radius of their starting point, to extend their work day twice a week. They also will no longer have to maintain logbooks.
This change, according to Sandberg, was prompted by safety data that show short-haul drivers make up over half the commercial fleet yet are involved in less than 7 percent of the nation’s fatigue-related fatal truck crashes.
The current HOS which went into effect January 2004 was thrown out by a District of Columbia Appeals Court after Public Citizen and others filed suit. The panel of three judges at the court told FMCSA to rewrite the rules and later an Act of Congress gave FMCSA until September of this year to come up with something new.