Flexible hours don’t cause crashes

When an organization or company petitions the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for an exemption or a rule change, it is common for the agency to require data that indicates the change won’t hinder safety.

If that data isn’t available, they may propose starting a pilot program to see whether or not the change will work.

Unintentionally, the FMCSA conducted a pilot program to see what would happen if you granted truck drivers more flexibility within the hours of service.

For about two-and-a-half years, truckers hauling relief loads received an exemption from some of the hours-of-service regulations under a federal COVID-19 emergency declaration.

That’s right. From March 2020 until Oct. 15, 2022, thousands of truck drivers were allowed to haul essential goods across the country without stringent hours-of-service regulations taking decision-making out of their hands.

And you know what happened? They were pretty safe, actually.

According to data FMCSA provided to Land Line last year, the agency was aware of only two crashes involving truck drivers operating under the waiver. Both were single-vehicle crashes, and one occurred on private property.

“The agency has no information that suggests that past or existing emergency exemptions have in fact negatively impacted road safety,” FMCSA wrote in a December notice.

Sure, it’s possible that some crashes occurred under the emergency declaration that weren’t reported. However, if there was a major crash involving a truck driver operating for an ungodly amount of hours under the waiver, you just know that a lawsuit and a series of news stories would have followed.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association said that FMCSA’s acknowledgment that emergency declarations haven’t negatively affected safety shows that the agency should do more to grant general hours-of-service flexibility to truck drivers.

“We agree with FMCSA’s assessment that there is ‘no information that suggests that past or existing emergency exemptions have in fact negatively impacted road safety.’ Every emergency declaration, including the extended COVID-19 hours-of-service waiver that was in place for more than two-and-a-half years, has shown that drivers are not going to abuse hours-of-service flexibility at the risk of highway safety,” OOIDA wrote. “We urge FMCSA to take further action to promote practical hours-of-service flexibility in all settings, not just emergency conditions.”

When truck drivers are forced to follow strict hours of service, starting and stopping aren’t determined by weather, traffic or fatigue. The clock is making the decision. What we should have learned from this impromptu pilot program is that when you put the decision in the hands of professional truck drivers, they’re not going to drive 24 hours straight and crash into everything they see. But they will have the ability to stop when they are tired or grab a bite to eat as they wait for rush-hour traffic to clear.

“FMCSA should take the lessons learned since March 2020 and apply them in ways that improve the quality of trucking jobs,” OOIDA wrote last year. “We believe granting additional hours-of-service flexibility will provide drivers more opportunities to rest when they are tired, to maintain greater control over their own schedules, and allow them to work more efficiently.”

OOIDA petitioned the agency in February 2018 to revise the hours of service. After a lengthy rulemaking, FMCSA added some flexibility to short-haul limits, split-sleeper options and the 30-minute break, while adding an adverse driving provision.

However, many truckers believed the rule changes didn’t go far enough.

Luckily for FMCSA, without even trying it conducted a lengthy pilot program to see how truckers would behave with more flexibility.

You have the data. It’s time to put it to good use. LL