The new hours-of-service trucking regulations grant two work days of up to 16 hours within a week to short-haul drivers operating within 150 air miles of their base and returning home each night, provided the equipment is smaller than that requiring a commercial driver’s license. The rules the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced Aug. 19 also allow such operations — many of which are construction related — to use payroll time sheets rather than log books for compliance purposes.
“We hope this new rule ends the uncertainty that the enforcement community and the industry have experienced regarding hours of service,” said FMCSA Administrator Annette Sandberg. “We are confident that these regulations are an important step toward highway safety and will prevent motor carrier crashes.”
The short-haul provision and a stipulation requiring drivers who use sleeper berths to satisfy their mandatory rest requirements by taking at least eight consecutive hours off duty and another two hours off duty throughout the work day were the only significant changes under the new regulations, which take effect Oct. 1. FMCSA announced a transition period through Dec. 31.
“The research shows that this new rule will improve driver health and safety and the safety of our roadways,” Sandberg said. “Ensuring drivers obtain necessary rest and restorative sleep will save lives.”
The short-haul rule that took effect in January 2004 allowed one workday of up to 16 hours, but no distinction was made based on the type of equipment. Short-haul drivers operating smaller equipment represent about half of all commercial truck registrations but only 10 percent of truck crashes and only 7 percent of fatal truck crashes, Sandberg said.
This latest revision of the hours rule results from a lawsuit by Citizens for Safe and Reliable Highways, Parents Against Tired Truckers and Public Citizen. A federal appeals court judge ruled in July 2004 that FCMSA had to rewrite the rule because it had failed to consider driver health in devising it.
In its revision, the agency indeed focused on driver health, Sandberg said. The rule changes were based upon research by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which collected data from 87 drivers using in-cab monitoring equipment, as well as 1,000 health research articles, Sandberg said. The agency also gave consideration to approximately 1,800 public comments.
