FMCSA Aims to Post HOS Proposal by Next Summer
Oliver B. Patton
Washington Editor
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration intends to publish proposed changes to the hours of service rule by early summer of 2005, with the aim of finishing revisions by the end of next September, said Administrator Annette Sandberg.
The agency has assembled a team of seven staff members whose sole task is to work on the hours of service project, Sandberg told industry representatives at a "listening session" on reform of the safety enforcement process.
These moves come in response to a court order that the rule be changed because it did not consider driver health, as is required by law. Meanwhile, Congress passed, and President Bush signed, legislation that keeps the current rule in effect until Sept. 30, 2005 (See related story).
Sandberg said she expects to complete research on the issue of driver health before the end of December, as part of the process of coming up with proposed changes to the rule. The team also is addressing other issues that were raised by the court: the increase in driving time from 10 to 11 hours, the use of split-time in sleeper berths, the 34-hour restart provision, and the use of electronic onboard recorders to track driver hours. The agency already has begun a fact-finding effort on onboard recorders.
The listening session, one of a half-dozen held in cities across the nation this fall, was in part intended to improve the way the agency goes about writing rules. Sandberg was critical of the process that produced the current hours of service rule.
She said the agency took its own counsel in coming up with the original proposed rule, rather than reaching out for ideas from the industry and others. The resulting proposal, which envisioned different schedules for different segments of the industry and which mandated onboard recorders for some segments, was met with a firestorm of opposition from the industry.
The industry responded to all of the "bad aspects" of the proposal, Sandberg said. The result was a massive file of comments that mostly opposed what the agency had offered. It took almost four years to put a scaled-back rule into place - and now that rule is in legal limbo.
"We will not do it that way again," Sandberg said, by way of explaining the rationale behind the listening session.
The idea is to enlist stakeholders in the process before the agency drafts its proposals. In this listening session, the agency was gathering opinions from industry and others on how to overhaul its safety enforcement system so it can keep up with industry growth. Sandberg said she expects this reform process - dubbed Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 - to lead to new rules and, possibly, legislative changes.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told attendees that they are part of the agency's research department. The safety analysis will be a "defining process" for the truck and bus industries, he said. "CSA 2010 has the potential to fundamentally reform the approach to safety enforcement."
Washington Report continued...
