Report finds higher hours-of-service violation rates since 2020 revisions

WASHINGTON — Adding flexibility to truck driver hours-of-service regulations in 2020 can have reduced road safety, based on data compiled by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

FMCSA compared HOS inspection and large-truck crash data from two years before the revisions went into effect on Sept. 29, 2020, and a 12 months after the effective date.

FMCSA’s evaluation, sent to Congress on Friday, concluded that the share of driver inspections that found at the very least one HOS violation or at the very least one out-of-service HOS violation  — which requires the driving force be faraway from service until the violation is corrected — was significantly higher throughout the post-change period. (See table.)

Large-truck crash rates pre- and post-revision also increased but not enough to be statistically significant. Nonetheless, “it is necessary to notice that initial trends can have been confounded by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on industry operations and FMCSA’s emergency declaration that provided HOS regulatory relief for industrial motorcar operations providing direct assistance in support of COVID-19 relief efforts,” FMCSA stated.

As well as, the agency noted that the implementation of the ELD mandate between December 2017 and December 2019 could even have safety implications. (FMCSA sent Congress a separate ELD report in April.) “Finally, there are many confounding aspects that influence crash rates, so this comparison doesn’t specifically discover the effect of the HOS rule changes,” FMCSA stated.

FMCSA’s 2020 final rule made revisions to 4 HOS provisions:

• It expanded the short-haul exception from 100 air-miles to 150 air-miles for CDL holders and allows a 14-hour shift for drivers utilizing the exception.
• It expanded the driving window during opposed driving conditions by two hours.
• It requires a break of at the very least 30 consecutive minutes of nondriving time after eight cumulative hours of driving but allows nondriving, on-duty time to count toward the break.
• It modified the sleeper berth exception to permit a driver to satisfy the 10-hour minimum off-duty requirement by spending at the very least seven hours within the berth plus at the very least two hours inside or outside the berth, provided the 2 periods total at the very least 10 hours.

FMCSA stated on the time that the changes “will improve efficiency without compromising safety by providing flexibility for drivers … without changing the utmost allowable driving time.”

Much of the trucking industry, including small-business owner-operators, supported the change and the operational flexibility expected to return with it.

In contrast, trucking safety advocates fought the changes, arguing that loosening the foundations would result in more crashes and diminished safety.

“All this report does is confirm what we already knew: Driver fatigue continues to be a menace that threatens everyone on the roads,” said Zach Cahalan, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, when asked to comment on FMCSA’s evaluation.

“FMCSA weakened HOS requirements in direct response to industry outcry and safety suffered. Large-truck fatalities have increased by 71% since 2009; the time for half-measures and partial solutions has long passed. FMCSA has a chance to meaningfully advance truck safety outcomes with large-truck [Automatic Emergency Braking] and speed-limiter rulemakings and we urge them to satisfy the moment.”

FMCSA didn’t address the protection implications that may very well be deduced from its report, presumably resulting from the limited and generalized data it had for making the pre- and post-rule revision evaluation.

As an alternative, it suggested that an alternate technique to understand the effect of the HOS changes can be to research safety outcomes specifically of those that took advantage of the brand new provisions. The issue, though, is that “there could be very limited data to support an in-depth evaluation of the protection outcomes of carriers that took advantage of the brand new HOS provisions compared to those who didn’t,” FMCSA contended.

“The pre- and post-rule change macro trend evaluation is proscribed in its reach given the dimensions of the HOS rule changes and other confounding aspects. Subsequent annual evaluation will include more data points and extra data breakouts. FMCSA will work on follow-on analyses drilling down into specific HOS violations or violation groups to try and correlate those with crash trends and can present any leads to future annual reports.”

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