• 21
  • December
    2011

The ongoing bureaucratic process to reform federal trucking safety regulations features plenty of detailed scientific arguments about the risks caused by truck driver fatigue, including deadly truck accidents. The primary regulatory response to this problem is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA) proposed changes to the Hours-of-Service (HOS) rule.

Proposed changes to the HOS rule would create marginally tighter restrictions on how many hours drivers can spend behind the wheel, how much time they must spend off duty and other factors that influence whether commercial driver's license holders become overtired. Not surprisingly, some trucking industry groups have taken a hard stand against overdue safety measures that could affect their profits.

Representatives of safety advocate groups recently sent a letter to a key federal official to counter claims from the American Trucking Association. The Association claims that the proposed new hours of service rules are not necessary due to recent evidence of semi crash reductions. A range of hard data provided in the letter shows why changes to HOS rules should lead to safer highways, fewer truck accidents and a reduction in serious injuries and wrongful deaths:

  • Truck driver fatigue plays a role in 13 percent of truck crashes, leading to a conservative estimate of 500 American deaths each year.
  • Survey results in the aftermath of implementation of the current HOS rule in 2004 show that close to 50 percent of truck drivers admit that they have fallen asleep while at the wheel in the past year.
  • The percentage of truck drivers who reported being drowsy or asleep at the time of a fatal crash was the nearly the same in 2008 as it was in 2003.

Political give and take in Washington keeps meaningful reforms on the table and allows enduring threats to motorists to carry the day from New York to Los Angeles. By holding trucking companies, negligent truck drivers and other responsible parties accountable for the tremendous harm caused in truck wrecks, California truck accident lawyers secure justice for clients that our federal bureaucracy can be slow to deliver.

Source: Truck Safety.org, "Letter to The Honorable Cass Sunstein," Dec. 2, 2011.