• 14
  • December
    2011

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently announced that its long-anticipated changes to trucker hours-of-service regulations will be unveiled before the year's end. The rules are designed to protect the public against the dangers posed by fatigued drivers.

Although the changes may be viewed as an unwelcome holiday gift by many industry groups, Las Vegas truck accident attorneys and other safety advocates are praising the revisions as a leap forward for safety.

The proposed changes limit drivers to 10 hours on the road and 13 hours of overall on-duty time each day. Currently, drivers are allowed 11 hours of driving time and may perform non-driving work that extends their total on-duty time well beyond 14 hours.

The proposed changes also require drivers to take at least 34 consecutive hours off-duty between each work week.

Changes Pit Motorist Safety Against Industry Profits

On average, more than 4,000 people die and 100,000 are injured in truck crashes every year. Truck driver fatigue is a major cause of these accidents. Approximately 65 percent of truck drivers report sometimes or often feeling drowsy while driving. Shockingly, nearly half of all truckers admit to having fallen asleep behind the wheel at some point during the year.

Truck drivers are under tremendous pressure to get deliveries across the country in short amounts of time. All too often, this stress leads truckers to keep driving when they know they should be resting.

Trucking companies are objecting to the proposed changes because they worry that limiting drivers' working hours will cut into industry profits. They say the changes will cost the industry $320 million per year. However, the FMCSA's regulatory analysis found that changes would actually save the industry $380 million annually.

This dollars-and-cents analysis may seem crude to the thousands of American families whose lives have been inexorably changed as a result of accidents caused by fatigued drivers. After all, what price can you put on the life of someone who was needlessly killed far before their time?

Source: Land Line Magazine, "Happy Holidays? FMSCA Tees Up HOS Unveiling for Late December," Jami Jones, Nov. 29, 2011.