FMCSA sends plan for a detention time study to OMB

As promised, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has a plan to study detention time and its effects on the trucking industry. And it’s ready to take the next step toward launching that study.

The agency announced on Feb. 2 that it is accepting comments on its plan to submit a proposed study to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The agency is accepting comments for 30 days on its intent to proceed with this next step.

In a notice published in the Federal Register, FMCSA announced that its proposed information collection study, titled Impact of Driver Detention Time on Safety and Operations, will collect data on driver detention time representative of major segments of the trucking industry. The agency plans to use the data to determine the frequency and severity of the problem and to assess how well existing intelligent transportation systems can measure that detention time.

The agency plans to collect data from 80 motor carriers and 2,500 drivers during the course of the study.

Answering the call of Congress

The proposed study is the result of a directive from Congress included in the 2021 infrastructure law requiring FMCSA to study the prevalence of detention time in the trucking industry.

For those in trucking, it’s not a big mystery that it is a problem.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has long contended that the detention problem leads to driver turnover in the industry and is a detriment to safety. Additionally, motor carriers rarely pay company drivers for that time spent waiting at the docks.

In 2018, DOT’s Office of Inspector General reported that detention time increased crash risks and costs but that the current data limited further analysis. The report recommended that FMCSA collaborate with industry stakeholders to develop and implement a plan to collect and analyze “reliable, accurate and representative data on the frequency and severity of driver detention.”

Even this “limited” analysis showed a link between detention time and crash rates.

Some of the findings from OIG’s report included that a 15-minute increase in time that a truck spent at a facility increased the average expected crash rate by 6.2% and that detention time costs for-hire truck drivers between $1.1 and $1.3 billion each year.

So what will be in the study? The Federal Register notice lists three primary objectives for it:

1. To assess the frequency and severity of driver detention time using data representing the major segments of the motor carrier industry
2. To assess the utility of existing intelligent transportation systems (for example, electronic logs) to measure detention time
3. To prepare a final report that summarizes the findings, answers the research questions and offers strategies to reduce detention time

Data for the study will come from a wide variety of trucking operations, including long- and short-haul operations, port operations, large motor carriers and owner-operators, to name a few. According to the notice, FMCSA plans to do multiple analyses on the data – including assessing the relationships between detention time and characteristics of carriers, facility locations and driver schedules (appointment times, time of day, day of week, month and season).

Comments

While this step in the process toward the study’s launch is open to the public for comment, it’s also largely procedural. Before an agency can start a study, federal law dictates that OMB must review and approve of plans. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 states agencies must evaluate the financial and time burdens on any research project conducted.

However, you can file comments on the proposed study here. LL