New Truckers Rule No Real Help Says AIA

By Daniel Hays

NU Online News Service, April 25, 10:22 a.m.EST?A federal rule announced yesterday that sets newlimits on how long a shift a trucker can work behind the wheel willnot really improve safety, an insurance trade group said.

The American Insurance Association in Washington voiced thecomplaint, saying it had urged officials of the Federal MotorCarrier Safety Agency to allow truckers no more than nineconsecutive hours of driving at a stretch.

Dave Snyder, AIA vice president and assistant general counsel,said under the old regulatory arrangement a trucker could drive for10 hours after an eight-hour rest period and in some circumstancesfor 16 hours.

Under the new regulation, the off duty requirement has beenexpanded to 10 hours, while the driving time has been increased to11 hours.

More rest, Mr. Snyder said was good news, but the agency hadignored research that showed after driving more than eight or ninehours, "the risk goes up dramatically."

Also questioning the new rule was the National Association ofIndependent Insurers.

David Golden, NAII director of commercial lines, said while theDes Plaines, Ill.-based NAII supports the 10-hour rest period as abeginning move to address safety issues it has "lingering concerns"that FMCSA still has not put drivers on a 24-hour basis forscheduling.

Twenty-four hour scheduling is a concept NAII supports "becausenumerous studies have shown that drivers maintain their alertnessmuch better when working in a natural circadian rhythm," Mr. Goldensaid. NAII said it would have more reaction after studying all68-pages of the new rules.

Mr. Snyder said the FMCSA had ignored AIA's recommendation thatonboard recorders be placed on all trucks to monitor driving timerather than relying on numbers put down in logs by truckers thatare frequently falsified.

Under the new FMCSA plan, drivers may not drive past the 14thhour of being on duty. Also, they may not drive after being on dutyfor 60 hours in a seven- consecutive-day period.

Today's rule change is the first significant change to thehours-of-service rules since 1939.

Mr. Snyder said that studies have shown that fatigue is a factorin the majority of truck crashes.

According to AIA, truck crashes each year claim nearly 5,000lives, injure hundreds of thousands of people, and cost billions ofdollars for medical care, property damage and lostproductivity.

AIA noted these crashes most often injure or kill the occupantsof the other vehicles involved, and when hazardous materials areinvolved, such crashes can constitute a large-scale disaster.

For years, individual insurance companies, AIA and otherworld-class safety experts, such as the Insurance Institute forHighway Safety, have formally and repeatedly petitioned regulatorsto require onboard data recorders to make sure that whatever rulesare on the books actually are enforced, AIA said in astatement.

The group said use of onboard recorders is a simple, cheap andeffective monitoring system--"yet rather than mandate recorders'use, the new rule only calls for further study of suchdevices."

FMCSA estimates that the new rule will save 75 lives and prevent1,320 crashes annually. "Even accepting that estimate," said Mr.Snyder, "it's far less than the human and financial costs thatcould have been saved with a stronger rule."

"Because of its contents and lack of effective enforcement, webelieve the new rules are unlikely to help achieve the Departmentof Transportation's self-imposed objective of reducing truck crashfatalities by 50 percent in the near future. Unfortunately, thiswas a tremendous opportunity lost."

Other details of the final rule can be found at http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov.