About three years ago, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published final rules that contained four modifications to federal hours of service (HOS) rules for truck drivers:

  • Short-haul exception – Expanded the short-haul exception from 100 air-miles to 150 air-miles for commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders and allowed a 14-hour work shift for drivers utilizing the exception.
  • Adverse driving conditions exception – Expanded the driving window during adverse driving conditions by two hours.
  • 30-minute break requirement – Required a break of at least 30 consecutive minutes of non-driving time after eight cumulative hours of driving but allowed non-driving, on-duty time to count toward the required break.
  • Sleeper berth provision – Modified the sleeper berth exception to allow a driver to meet the 10-hour minimum off-duty requirement by spending at least seven hours in the berth plus at least two hours inside or outside the berth, provided the two periods total at least 10 hours.

Those changes were effective Sept. 29, 2020 – but so was something else, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting FMCSA HOS waivers for motor carriers and truck drivers providing “direct assistance in support of relief efforts.”

So when Congress requested a report from FMCSA on the safety implications of the four HOS rule changes, FMCSA responded that the data was “inconclusive.” While the number of truck driver inspections showing HOS violations and those that placed the driver out of service had each ticked up, the large truck crash rate and large truck fatality rate showed no statistically significant changes.

FMCSA lays the blame for the inconclusive results at the feet of COVID-19. From March 2020 through the middle of October 2022, FMCSA had issued nine emergency declarations with waivers of HOS rules and certain other safety regulations. Muddling any analysis of the impact the four HOS rule changes had during this timeframe was the fact that FMCSA adjusted the commodities deemed necessary for “relief efforts,” so the number and type of motor carrier providing that emergency relief service was also subject to change.

What can trucking expect in future emergencies?

  • FMCSA has proposed modifying the scope of regulatory relief automatically granted in declared emergencies, both in terms of the length of time an emergency declaration may be effective and in terms of the federal regulations automatically included.
  • Midway through the COVID-19 pandemic, FMCSA began to require motor carriers operating under the emergency declaration to report their reliance on it. Trucking can expect similar data-gathering efforts during any future emergencies.

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