At times last month it seemed as if the trucking industry and its foes were fighting two completely different battles. The American Trucking Assns. and its allies were pushing Congress to suspend temporarily two regulatory provisions while the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reconsiders whether those provisions actually cost more lives than they save and create other unintended consequences.
For safety advocates, labor unions and others, nothing less was at stake than the 3,500 lives lost each year in crashes involving large commercial trucks. They recounted some truly horrendous tragedies involving large trucks—often where the truck driver allegedly was in flagrant violation of hours-of-service regulations. Fueling their cause in the media and on Capitol Hill was a single fatal crash in New Jersey in June that also seriously injured a celebrity.
Rhetoric always favors the trucking industry’s foes. After all, how could anyone propose something that might lead to a single lost life? It’s strictly taboo, and the shamer-in-chief is none other than FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro. In a November 2013 Congressional hearing, for example, Ferro became angry when a lawmaker hinted that in the scheme of the overall highway safety challenge, a focus on 19 lives FMCSA projects will be saved each year by last year’s HOS rules was misplaced.
You might cut Ferro some slack if the issue truly were saving 19 lives versus not saving any, but that’s not the case. The trucking industry is right that FMCSA never considered whether imposing a nighttime driving ban two nights a week on each driver using the restart might result in more crashes by putting more trucks and cars on the road together. Nor did the agency study whether giving truck drivers credit for only one restart every 168 hours might discourage them from taking additional breaks, thereby creating fatigue rather than relieving it.
The strongest criticism of the industry’s position is that a comprehensive study of the HOS restart provisions could be done while the rules remain in place and that Congress should defer to FMCSA’s decision in the interim. In a political vacuum, it’s a persuasive argument, but that’s not reality. When Congress does nothing but order a study, it’s really deciding to do almost nothing. And when Congress forces a federal agency to study something against its will, that study seems to take far longer than expected. Suspending the regulations is a prudent measure to light a fire under FMCSA.
Activists will always fight anything the trucking industry proposes. In the latest skirmish, they barely even acknowledge the industry’s claim that the restart changes run counter to safety. That doesn’t fit their well-worn narrative that the only thing the industry cares about is productivity. Factors other than truck driver fatigue cause the vast majority of truck-involved crashes, and the industry can’t let bad publicity thwart its push for sound, balanced policies.
Beltway Briefs
- FMCSA finalized its plan to allow drivers and carriers to use the DataQs tool to correct their Compliance, Safety, Accountability data by updating the database to reflect the results of adjudicated state citations. The change applies to citations issued on or after Aug. 23, 2014.
- The U.S. House of Representatives approved by a thoroughly partisan 214-to-212 vote an amendment to the Dept. of Transportation Appropriations Bill (H.R. 4742) that would prevent FMCSA from increasing the minimum level of financial responsibility for motor carriers. The agency announced in April that it plans to conduct a rulemaking to increase the minimum insurance level, which for most freight carriers is $750,000.
- Rep. John Duncan (R-TN) introduced a bill (H.R. 4727) that would shield shippers, brokers and others from liability if they take steps to confirm that the carrier has federal operating authority, maintains required insurance, and does not have an unsatisfactory safety rating.
- Livestock haulers won a one-year exemption from the 30-minute rest break provision of the hours-of-service regulations. The action follows a 90-day waiver that lapsed in October 2013.
