The Federal Motor Carriers Administration’s (FMCSA) new goal of “completely re-writing” hours of service (HOS) regulations within two years is eliciting strong reaction from trucking.

Advocacy group Public Citizen agreed to suspend its ongoing legal challenge to the 34-hour restart and 11 hours of driving provisions in the current rules in exchange for FMCSA’s agreement to send HOS rules back through the regulatory process. FMCSA has promised to prepare a new notice of proposed rulemaking in nine months and to reach a final rule in 21 months. The current rules are to stay  in place during that process.

Some trucking experts believe the result will be proposals to push pack available driver hours-- raising transportation costs and reducing productivity. Others contend the effort to change HOS rules will absorb too much of the agency’s time; time that would be better spent in other ways to improve trucking safety.

“My take is this [HOS reform] effort is going to take a lot of work and a lot of time,” John Hill, the immediate past Administrator of the FMCSA, told FleetOwner. “I am a little surprised that there’s not more focus on a effort to mandate EOBRs [electronic on board recorders] as that technology would do a lot more to improve highway safety than just changing the current 11-hour drive time limit back to 10 hours. I think EOBRs is where we need to go to really improve safety.”

Public Citizen and other groups – notably Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – have argued that scientific studies do not support the retention of the 11th hour of driving and 34-hour restart provisions, and that those provisions put driver health and public safety at risk.

Hill, however, contends that such claims overlook the steady fall in truck-related fatalities since the new HOS rules were implemented in 2004 as well as what he considers the biggest benefit of those regulations – an increase in the driver off-duty period from 8 hours to 10 hours.

“I find it amusing that they conveniently omit the benefit of a two-hour increase in driver off-duty time,” Hill said. “That increase in rest time has been a huge reason for the safety benefits we’ve seen over the years.”

Large truck fatalities did decline to 4,808 in 2007 – the lowest large truck fatality rate since 1992, and a 4.4% decrease from 2006.  Fatalities in large truck crashes also dropped for three years in a row, from 5,240 in 2005 to 4,808 in 2007, a total decline of 8.2%. Injuries are down as well, dropping to 101,000 in 2007 – a 4.7% reduction since 2006 and a big decline from a peak of 142,000 injuries in 1999.

Finally, fatal truck crash rates are way down as well, according to FMCSA’s own data, dropping to 4,190 fatal crashes in 2007; the lowest number since 1993 and a 3.7% decrease from 2006.  Large truck fatal crashes have dropped from 4,551 in 2005 to 4,190 in 2007 for a total decline of 7.9%, according to agency figures.

The big concern over HOS reform in trucking, not surprisingly, centers on a potential reduction in available driving hours.

“Tighter regulations will surely be the result – probably moving back to a 10-hour driving limit and some change to the reset provisions,” Noel Perry, a principle with the Transport Fundamentals consulting group, told FleetOwner. “The economics are simple: there will be a productivity hit of 3% to 6% depending on the reset provisions, and this will get ultimately get passed on to the customers.”