Safety Activists Ask Court To Reject New Hours Rule
Oliver B.Patton
Washington Editor
A coalition of safety activists is asking an appellate court to reject the new hours of service rule and make the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration come up with a revision.
"The final rule abandons virtually every principle FMCSA had proclaimed necessary for the new (hours) rules," the coalition said in its brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Allied in the effort are Public Citizen, Citizens for Responsible and Safe Highways (CRASH) and Parents Against Tired Truckers.
The coalition argued that instead of shortening driver hours, the agency increased them by as much as 28% per week.
This circumstance is created by the 34-hour restart provision, which lets drivers who have used up their weekly hours to resume driving within a 7- or 8-day schedule. According to the coalition, a driver who works a 7-day schedule can follow a 21-hour rotation (11 hours driving followed by 10 hours off-duty) and take 34 consecutive hours off-duty — and drive 77 hours in 7 days. That's a 28% work time increase over the old rules, the coalition said.
"The rule also permits drivers to partition sleep into unrestful fragments in a sleeper berth; condones noncircadian schedules; fails to require a weekly recovery period for sleep-deprived drivers; ignores the risks of nighttime driving; and perpetuates a system in which most drivers willfully violate HOS limits."
Also, the agency failed to address the problem of HOS violations, because it did not require electronic onboard recorders, the coalition said.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for April 15, 2004, and a final decision is not likely before mid-summer.
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