Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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LEADING NEWS, TRUCKING MARKET CONDITIONS AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS Safety fitness rule pulled after industry pushback T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month with- drew its January 2016 proposal to rework the way it rates carriers and determines their fitness to operate. The withdrawal of the Safety Fitness Determination rule was published March 23 in the Federal Register by FMCSA, a few weeks after industry groups asked Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to kill the proposal. The SFD, which had been in the works for a decade, initially was issued as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking last January, and FMCSA planned to issue a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking this year to tweak the rule and solicit industry feedback. However, due to widespread con - cern over the rule's reliance on the Compliance Safety Accountability program's Safety Measurement System BASIC ratings — which have been pulled from public view due to con - cerns about their accuracy in judging carriers' safety — FMCSA says it decided to withdraw the SFD proposal alto- gether and start anew. Congress in late 2015 used the most recent highway bill to require FMCSA to pull the SMS BASIC carrier rankings from public view because of what many believe is their limited ability to score carriers accurately. Congress also required the agency to work with the National Academies of Science to reform the CSA to address its ability to target unsafe operators. The agency says it will wait to reissue a Safety Fitness Determination proposal until after the CSA SMS revamp has been implemented. – James Jaillet 34-hour restart study affirms less-restrictive hours regs T he results of a congressionally mandated study confirm that truckers' 34-hour restarts will not require two 1-5 a.m. periods and be limited to once per week. Congress suspended the restart limi- tations in December 2014 pending the issuance of the U.S. Department of Transportation's study. DOT's report released last month shows the restart pro- visions did nothing to enhance safety. The regulations had been suspended since a December 2014-issued notice, and the report did not change current rules for truckers. DOT's Office of Inspector General sent Congress a letter March 2 signing off on the study, saying it agreed with the report's conclusions and that DOT followed Congress' directives in completing the research. A few days after OIG notified Congress, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration posted a notice on its website stating that the restart rules would not go back into effect. The study found that truckers abiding by the July 1, 2013 regulations — those requiring the early-morning periods to be included in the restart — operated no more safely than truckers not abiding by the rules. More than 200 drivers were studied for DOT's report, which was executed by FMCSA and Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute. The drivers were divided into two groups: One group followed the more restrictive 2013 rules, and the others were free to use the restart as they wanted. Researchers compared drivers' schedules and analyzed events such as crashes and near crashes, as well as driver alertness and health. The study "did not explicitly identify a net benefit from the use of the two suspended provisions of the restart rule on driver operations, safety, fatigue and health." The more restrictive hours-of-service rule took effect in July 2013, prompting widespread criticism from both fleets and drivers for preventing truckers from returning to duty until 5 a.m. after a restart, even if the restart had spanned a full 34 hours. One of the chief arguments against the regu- lations was that it pushed drivers into early- morning rush-hour traffic — which both fleets and drivers argued caused both safety and operational issues — and that FMCSA issued the rule with little scientific evidence to back up the restrictions. Scan the QR code with your smartphone or visit ccjdigital.com/ news/subscribe-to- newsletters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newslet- ter filled with news, analysis, blogs and market condition articles. Continued on page 15 Truckers can operate as they have since December 2014, meaning 34-hour restarts can be used at any time and do not require two 1-5 a.m. periods. commercial carrier journal | april 2017 11