Hotshot Connect Forum :: Court Issues Split Ruling on Drivers’ Hours of Service Rule

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Court Issues Split Ruling on Drivers’ Hours of Service Rule
ATA to Seek Stay on Ruling

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A federal court issued a split ruling Tuesday on the government’s rules governing truck driver hours of service, rejecting a petition by a group representing owner-operators but granting a separate request by a public safety advocate group.

American Trucking Associations said it will seek a stay from the court to keep current rules in place until the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration provides the court with explanations for two of the rules provisions, the group said following the ruling.

“ATA believes the existing rules have proven to be a significant improvement over the old rules in terms of reducing driver fatigue and related incidents,” said ATA President Bill Graves.

“Motor carrier experience and FMCSA data dramatically illustrate this. ATA plans to provide additional real-world documentation of the effectiveness of the current rules,” Graves said in a statement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia’s decision denied a motion by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association but granted a request by Public Citizen and other groups to overturn portions of the HOS rule.

The court’s ruling ends nearly eight months of speculating about the fate of the rule, which will now go back to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The three-judge panel ruled that FMCSA “failed to give interested parties an opportunity to comment on the methodology of the crash-risk model that the agency used to justify an increase in the maximum number of daily and weekly hours that truck drivers may drive and work.”

“We also find that the agency failed to provide an explanation for critical elements of that methodology,” the court stated.

In a written statement, FMCSA said it was evaluating its next step.

“We are analyzing the decision issued today to understand the court’s findings as well as determine the agency’s next steps to prevent driver fatigue, ensure safe and efficient motor carrier operations and save lives,” FMCSA said. “This decision does not go into effect until Sept. 14, unless the court orders otherwise.”

The court vacated the portions of the rule that extended the maximum allowable driving time to 11 hours from the previous limit of 10, and eliminated the so-called 34-hour restart, which allows drivers to reset their maximum allowable hours in a week.

The ruling maintains the limit for drivers’ work time of 14 consecutive hours. Previously, the agency had allowed drivers to work for 15 hours per day, but had let them clock on and off duty.

The court setback is FMCSA’s second since it first tried to rewrite the hours rules in 2003. The 2003 regulation was entirely vacated by the court in July 2004, but a one-year congressional extension allowed the agency to work on a revision with the struck-down rule in place.

FMCSA issued a new rule in 2005, making almost no changes to the previously voided rule, but making modifications to the provisions governing sleeper berth use.

OOIDA had challenged these rules, saying they were too inflexible and created an unsafe driving environment, but that challenge was rejected by the court.

By Transport Topics
Senior Reporter Sean McNally contributed to this story.

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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration filed a memorandum with a court in Washington Friday strongly supporting American Trucking Associations’ request that the court’s vacating of provisions of truck driver hours-of-service rules be stayed pending their reconsideration by the agency.

Agreeing with ATA that a stay of the rule needed to “prevent substantial disruption of trucking operations,” FMCSA cited timing concerns and significant transition costs to the industry related to a rule change, costs it noted that could “have to be incurred again.”

FMCSA also pointed to disruptions and confusion in HOS enforcement if the rules were changed, ATA said.

The agency noted the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had invalidated the 11- and 34-hour provision “on procedural grounds only” and that the “decision did not foreclose issuance of a new rule that contains the 11-hour and 34-hour provisions, assuming the agency provides the requisite notice and comment and adequately explains its reasoning.”

ATA had sought a stay of the court’s split ruling in July that rejected an owner-operators group’s petition but granted one by a public safety advocacy group.

FMCSA suggested that the court grant a 12-month stay during which it would conduct a new rulemaking to consider new data and address the procedural shortcomings identified by the court, ATA said.

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American Trucking Associations said that the public interest group that claims to promote highway safety disregards the safety advantages of truck drivers’ hours of service regulations the group has repeatedly challenged in court.

The group, Public Citizen, also disregards the positive safety experience of the motor carrier industry under the HOS rules, ATA said Friday.

Public Citizen “continues to fail to recognize that the current HOS regulations significantly increased the mandated daily rest period for drivers from 8 to 10 hours and required drivers to complete their daily driving within 14 hours of the beginning of their shifts instead of an extendable 15 hours in the previous regulations,” ATA said.

Those changes help ensure that drivers do not suffer from cumulative fatigue and make safer the driver’s daily driving tour, including in the 11th hour, ATA said.

In response to a challenge from Public Citizen, other safety groups and the Teamsters union, a federal court in July vacated two HOS provisions: one allowing 11 hours of driving time per day and one allowing drivers to restart their weekly clock after 34 hours of rest.

ATA, citing positive safety data under the new rules and extreme disruptions to the trucking industry related to a transition to new rules is seeking a stay of decision for eight months to allow those provisions to stay in place pending further agency action.

FMCSA strongly supported that motion, citing the same grounds relied on by ATA, but asked that the stay be 12 instead of eight months.

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The current truck-driver hours-of-service rules - allowing 11 hours of driving and restarting a week after 34 hours of rest - are likely to remain in place for at least several more weeks, lawyers representing the trucking industry and safety groups told Transport Topics.

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ATA Response to U.S. Court of Appeals Decision on Hours of Service
ARLINGTON, Va. – The American Trucking Associations is pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has granted in part its motion for a stay of the mandate to eliminate the 11-hour daily driving limit and 34-hour restart provisions of the Hours-of-Service regulations, which govern truck driver work and rest periods.

While ATA awaits the decision by the Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on how they plan to proceed during the 90-day stay granted by the Court, ATA is confident the Court has provided the Agency sufficient time to issue an Interim Final Rule that retains the 11-hour driving limit and the 34-hour restart.

ATA will continue to urge the Agency to proceed to a final rule in a timely manner.

ATA submitted a motion Sept. 6, asking the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for an 8-month stay of its mandate to eliminate the 11-hour daily driving limit and 34-hour restart provisions of the Hours-of-Service regulations, citing serious disruptions to the trucking industry. A July 24 court decision vacated the two HOS provisions, citing various procedural issues identified during the rulemaking process, but did not say that those rules were unsafe.

The Trucking industry and its customers could not instantaneously shift to an hours-of-service regime with a different daily driving limit and without the 34-hour restart. Rather, such a conversion would require months of preparation.

Changes require retraining drivers and operating personnel, reprinting logs and other forms, reprogramming dispatching and electronic onboard recording software, reengineering routes, addressing customers’ issues, hiring new drivers and purchasing new trucks to compensate for the loss of productivity.

The American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of other trucking groups, industry-related conferences, and its 50 affiliated state trucking associations, ATA represents more than 37,000 members covering every type of motor carrier in the United States.

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ATA Welcomes Retention of Hours of Service Rule
Research Shows Regulations Reduce Crashes, Fatalities and Injuries

The American Trucking Associations welcomes the Interim Final Rule on drivers’ Hours of Service issued today by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The rule retains the key components of the 2004 rule, which ATA has supported because in just four years it has led to significant decreases in the number of fatal large truck crashes, the fatal large truck crash rate, the number of injuries from truck-involved crashes, and the injury crash rate.

"FMCSA has made an important contribution to highway safety by keeping in force Hours of Service rules that have led to a reduction in deaths and injuries over the last several years," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves.

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WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s panel on surface transportation called the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s revised hours-of-service rule “a sham,” while advocacy groups asked a federal court to once again overturn portions of the rule.[/size]