Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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LEADING NEWS, TRUCKING MARKET CONDITIONS AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS House bill would reinstate prior hours rule, delay July 1 provisions A bill introduced in the U.S. House last month would reinstate the hours-of-service rule in effect prior to July 1 by delaying the current rule pending a congressional investigation. U.S. Reps. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Mike Michaud (D-Maine) introduced the True Understanding of the Economy and Safety Act (TRUE Safety Act) that would allow truck drivers to revert back to obeying the 34-hour restart rule that was in place prior to July 1 – the one in place since April 2003. The six-page bill also would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct an independent assessment of the methodology used by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to create the revised rule that limits the use of the 34-hour restart to once per 168 hours and requires that the restart include two consecutive 1-5 a.m. periods. Per the bill, FMCSA also would not allow the new 34-hour restart rule to be re-implemented until six months after the GAO submitted its report to Congress. Hanna said the TRUE bill would allow assessment of the regulations "to ensure the rule makes sense and will not actually harm the traveling public and the American economy." "It is wrongheaded for the federal government to impose an arbitrary and capricious regulation that impacts almost every sector of the American economy without first finishing a study on its effectiveness," Hanna said. "Federal agencies should have an obli- Deadly crashes prompt NTSB to recommend FMCSA audit T he National Transportation Safety Board last month recommended to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx that the Federal Motor Carrier The bill also would require an independent assessment of FMCSA's methodology for its 34-hour restart rule. gation to prove that new rules and regulations do not cause more harm than good, in terms of both safety and costs." Hanna tried in July to attach an amendment to a larger House transportation bill that would have delayed the July 1 hours rule, but the bill was pulled before Congress' August recess. "[FMCSA] is requiring truckers to comply with one of the most stringent parts of its regulation prior to receiving their study's findings," Rice said, adding that the bill would "require an additional study to ensure that our truckers are not being over-regulated." In August, House members – including Hanna, Rice and Michaud – sent a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and House colleagues saying FMCSA once again would miss its deadline to complete a report on the results of the hours-ofservice study required by the current MAP21 highway funding act. The hours-of-service rule was tested in court by the American Trucking Associations, which had sued FMCSA in an attempt to undo the rule. An Aug. 2 ruling upheld the Scan the QR code with your smartphone or entirety of the rule except visit ccjdigital.com/news/subscribe-to-newsfor a mandatory 30-minletters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a ute break for short-haul daily e-mail newsletter filled with news, analydrivers. sis, blogs and market condition articles. – James Jaillet Safety Administration be audited on its oversight capabilities of motor carriers and trucking companies. NTSB said its findings "raise serious questions about the oversight of motor carrier operations" and come in response to investigations within the past year into four accidents in which collectively 25 people were killed and 83 more injured. In all four accidents, NTSB investigators said it identified "safety deficiencies and noted red flags had been present prior to the crashes," and that the red flags were either not noticed or not acted upon by FMCSA. NTSB said its investigations raised issues about both FMCSA's "thoroughness and quality" of compliance reviews and the agency's "increasing reliance on focused compliance reviews," as they focus on just a narrow portion of a carrier's operation. "Our investigators found that, in many cases, the poor performing company was on FMCSA's radar for violations, but was allowed to continue operating and was not scrutinized closely until they had deadly crashes," said NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman. FMCSA responded via a prepared statement, saying each year it has increased the number of carriers it has shut down for unsafe practices, and that in 2012 it shut down 47 carriers compared to just 10 in 2011. COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL – James Jaillet | DECEMBER 2013 11