The numbers are in: nine of the top 20 driver violations for 2022 relate to hours of service (HOS), plus 11 of the next 20. As motor carriers and truck drivers are well aware, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration pays the closest attention to HOS when measuring a carrier’s overall Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) safety ranking and its Inspection Selection System (ISS) score. So, the frequency of HOS violations demands attention:

  • Who is responsible for the violations?
  • And what can be done to avoid them?

A new whitepaper from PrePass, “The Top 20 Trucker Hours of Service Violations & How to Avoid Them,” addresses responsibility for HOS compliance, from the top on down. Then, using the top 20 HOS violations from FMCSA’s database, shows four simple steps motor carriers and drivers can take to eliminate or reduce many of those violations.

POP QUIZ:

  • What is required in an “ELD information packet”?
  • Did the old “form and manner” HOS violations disappear with ELDs?
  • Who cares if a driver forgets to log off the ELD at the end of a workday?

This whitepaper answers these questions and more, shares why those answers are important, and offers some sage advice.

For FMCSA to count an HOS violation against a carrier’s safety record, inspectors must first discover and document the violation. Here the whitepaper reveals that the “root cause” of documented HOS violations often resides in areas of a motor carrier’s safety program other than HOS compliance. Law enforcement pulls trucks over for visible problems – mostly unsafe driving and maintenance issues. At that point, inspectors will also scrutinize HOS records. Fix the visible problems and the accompanying HOS review will not occur. And the carrier’s overall safety will improve. While this approach may reduce inspections, it by no means provides an alternative to HOS compliance. Safety scores will also improve when receiving clean inspections.

How does a carrier find those “root cause” episodes which underlie many HOS violations? As the whitepaper explains, PrePass customers have a distinct advantage – they have access to INFORM Safety. With INFORM Safety’s easy-to-use data visualization software, PrePass customers see safety violation “hot spots,” sort by type of violation, and drill down to which drivers or which maintenance shop – and, ultimately, which layer of management — is responsible for HOS problems and more.

Tackle HOS violations – and improve overall safety – by reading ““The Top 20 Trucker Hours of Service Violations & How to Avoid Them.”