Western-Star.com

Agency keeps rule letting truckers drive 11-hour shifts

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration declined to downshift Friday on the number of hours a long-haul trucker can drive without rest, and drew immediate criticism from highway safety activists.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced new "hours of service" regulations on the trucking industry, but left intact a controversial, two-year-old provision allowing drivers to stay on the road 11 hours without a required rest.

"This agency is still asleep at the wheel," said Jackie Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a coalition of consumer, health, medical and safety groups and insurance companies.

Noting that a federal court in 2003 stopped the agency's original move to increase a 10-hour driving limit that had been in effect for decades, Gillan said, "They've taken the rule that was rejected by the court and repackaged it as something new and different."

The administration "has failed once again to protect the health and safety of working truck drivers and American families on our roads and highways," she charged.

Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook called the new rules "a disappointment."

Annette Sandberg, the FMCSA administrator, said the 400 pages of new rules are backed up by more than 1,000 articles and studies on driver fatigue and thousands of comments from drivers, truck companies and safety advocates.

"The research shows this new rule will improve driver health and safety and the safety of our roadways," she said.

Like the 2003 regulations, the new rules prohibit truckers from driving more than 11 hours in a row, working longer than a 14-hour shift and driving more than 60 hours over a seven-day period or 70 hours over an eight-day period, said Sandberg. However, the new rule increases the number of hours that a trucker must rest between shifts from eight to 10.

Another change requires truckers who use sleeper berths to rest for eight hours in a row and take another two hours off duty before starting a new shift. Currently drivers may break up their rest time in the berths. Sandberg said studies show that drivers are less fatigued if they take a single eight-hour block of rest rather than shorter periods.

The highway safety advocates applauded this change. However, they lamented that the federal agency did not move toward requiring global positioning systems or other high-tech monitors to replace driver logbooks of rest time, which critics charge allow cheating.

The trucking industry was guarded in its reaction.

"We are pleased that there are just a few changes in the rules," said Dave Berry, chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association. "We think it is supported by good science and a lot of analysis."

However, he said there has not been time to assess the "change that will potentially have the biggest impact," the new rules on sleeper berths. Many husband-and-wife driver teams operate with such systems, he said.

"We need to closely examine the impact of the new 'sleeper berth' rule," agreed Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Association. "particularly team drivers that are so critical to our just-in-time economy."

Sandberg said the new rules, which take effect Oct. 1, will cost the long-haul industry about $10 million a year.

Sandberg also announced new rules for short-haul truck drivers who travel less than 150 miles a day and don't require a commercial driver's license for their job.

These drivers — for landscape crews or retail deliveries, for instance — will not longer be required to keep a logbook. And two days a week, they will be allowed to work 16-hour days, including breaks — an exemption to the 14-hour limit on the workday of a long-distance driver.

Sandberg said these short-haul drivers make up 52 percent of all commercial drivers but are only involved in 7 percent of the fatigue-related fatal truck crashes. They usually spend the night at home rather than on the road, she said.

Sandberg said the changes will save short-haul companies $280 million a year.

In criticizing the new rules, Claybrook said that "the Bush administration's own data show that fatalities stemming from large truck crashes are up 3.1 percent from 2003 to 2004."

But Sandberg countered that driver fatigue causes only 5.5 percent of fatal truck crashes.

Bob Dart's e-mail address is bobdart@coxnews.com