On the Record: An Interview With New FMCSA Chief John Hill
By Oliver B. Patton,
Washington Editor
When John Hill, the new chief of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, was a state patrolman in Indiana early in his career, it was pretty easy to enforce the law. He was assigned to an area where he didn't know anyone, so it was not hard to be impartial. After a while, though, he was stopping people he'd come to know, and then it was not so easy.
"You still have to enforce the law the same, but it's a little hard when you know somebody – but you still have to do it, when it's deserving," he said.
With Hill, the message is, what you see is what you get. He believes in safety, in cooperation and in enforcement.
In a wide-ranging interview at FMCSA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Hill put it this way.
"The incoming chairman of the American Trucking Associations is Mac McCormick [chairman and CEO of Best Way Express]. He's a guy from Indiana and I know him. I know this guy is committed to safety. I've had discussions with him long before I ever thought about coming to D.C., and I know that in his leadership of ATA this year he is going to be committed to safety."
Hill expects McCormick to be looking for ways to promote the trucking industry's interests, but he also expects him to look for common interests with the federal agency that regulates truck safety.
"We will do the things that we can do jointly, and when I have to enforce it I'll enforce it, whether it's [ATA's] members or anybody else," Hill said. "The idea is that we're working together to find solutions to our problems and I'm committed to that. I did it while I was in Indiana and I'm going to continue to do it here. We have to have the ability to sit down with safety advocates in this industry and talk through issues. I just hope that everybody on that side is willing to do the same on their end."
Hill's strategic agenda is the same as his predecessors': save lives, speed up the rulemaking process and improve the agency's administration.
Since the Clinton administration, the safety agency has been chasing an elusive safety goal. Its target is to cut the rate of fatalities in truck accidents to 1.65 per 100 million miles by 2008. In 2005, the latest year statistics are available, the fatality rate was around 2.3.
Stating the obvious, Hill said the agency will not meet the target in 2008. While the number of fatalities has remained fairly steady – in the neighborhood of 5,000 in recent years – truck mileage is not rising quickly enough to drive the rate down. It is possible to achieve the 1.65 rate in about 10 years, if current trends persist, he said.
Hill hopes technology will help speed up the process. He said he will be looking at things such as collision avoidance systems, lane deviation devices and adaptive cruise control as ways to help drivers compensate for errors or inattention.
He's also going to focus on accidents in congested areas and construction zones. "About 5 percent of fatal crashes have to do with work zones. If you take 5 percent here and a couple of percent over there and start aggregating those savings, I think you're going to start seeing reductions."
That, and fastening seat belts: "We could save 120 to 130 lives [a year] just by that alone."
The agency is close to publishing a number of significant rulemakings. The White House Office of Management and Budget is reviewing a half-dozen proposals in the last stage before publication: a final rule on which documents a carrier needs to prove compliance with hours of service; a proposal on electronic onboard recorders; a proposal to toughen requirements for entry into the business; a proposal to make medical certification information available online; a proposal for regulating intermodal chassis; and a proposal to regulate household goods brokers.
Hill was not able to discuss details because the rules are still under wraps, but he did have some general observations about onboard recorders that shed light on his thinking.
Asked if the agency has gathered all the information it needs on this issue, he replied, "I don't believe we have all of the answers, but we have done a considerable amount of research and we have framed what we think is a good starting point."
Whether the proposal will preserve the current voluntary approach to recorders or make them mandatory or call for a pilot project, Hill believes the industry will wind up supporting their use. "I think what will happen is, if we move into an electric onboard recording environment ... you're going to start seeing people recognize ancillary benefits that they hadn't thought about."
Hill was not able to shed much light on recent news about an agency pilot project to permit long-haul trucking across the Mexican border. Such operations are permitted under the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the agency has a scheme in place to regulate that trade, but the two countries have not come to terms on how to make it happen. The pilot project was billed as a way to test the idea, and Hill said details will emerge as the U.S. and Mexico continue their discussions.
"We are working with the Mexican government to ensure that we have proper procedures in place, and that they are ready to allow American trucks to go south. We haven't been able to come to agreement yet between our two countries on how that should be worked out."
If the U.S. and Mexico can come to terms, "I think you will see a pilot program sooner than you will later. We'd like for there to be this opportunity to test it on a smaller scale ... but it's not really defined yet. We don't want to get ahead of our Mexican partners," he said.
The gorilla in the corner at FMCSA is the hours of service rule. The rule is now in litigation before the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. The plaintiffs, a group of safety advocacy groups led by Public Citizen, argue that the safety agency has not corrected the mistakes it made in the first version. If the judges side with Public Citizen, they may order the agency to do yet another rewrite.
And that, Hill said, would be huge. "The last time that happened, when the court vacated the rule, we took 11 people from their regular jobs and dedicated them, gave them separate office space in the building. That's all they did for a year, was do that rule over again."
If it happened again, "it would distract us from our current rulemaking agenda, unfortunately."
At the same time, he is comfortable with what the agency did in the rewrite. "I will say I feel like we addressed the court's concerns in this revised rule. We addressed what the court wanted us to do in looking at driver health. We believe that we looked at the latest data and the facts and therefore we feel good about where we're headed on this."
The court has not yet set a hearing date, although it is expected some time this fall.
Hill said he is prepared to work with the safety advocacy groups. "I think there's a lot of expertise there. They have dedicated their lives to safety. I'm prepared to work with them just like everyone else. They are a safety partner.
"I just would hope we could become partners and not just litigants of one another," he said.
"To me, safety has a threshold that you have to care for the motoring public, so your rules (and) your enforcement need to drive toward that focal point: what's best and safest for the people. And people have differing views of where that is. I have spent my whole life doing enforcement and I tell you, you can do it a lot of different ways, and voluntary compliance is the best way." Nevertheless he added, "We believe in enforcement and we're going to continue to have enforcement."
