BREAKING NEWS: Court rejects HOS restart, additional hour of driving
By Avery Vise

In a significant setback for many trucking companies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today, July 24, invalidated two significant pieces of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service regulations – the increase of the daily driving limit to 11 hours from the previous 10 hours, and the 34-hour restart option for drivers’ weekly on-duty limits.

In addition, the court rejected the petition filed by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association for greater flexibility in use of the sleeper berth, including allowing team drivers to continue to split rest in sleeper berths as they could before the August 2005 revision.

FMCSA's failings in the case appear to have been mainly in how it put the rule together, rather than in what the rule contained. The court concluded FMCSA “violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it failed to give interested parties an opportunity to comment on the methodology of the crash-risk model that the agency used to justify an increase in the maximum number of daily and weekly hours that truck drivers may drive and work.” The court also held that the agency “failed to provide an explanation for critical elements of that methodology.”

What happens now is unclear. When the appeals court rejected the first revised hours-of-service regulation in July 2004, Congress held the new rules in place for about a year while FMCSA worked on a new version. It remains to be seen whether a Democrat-controlled Congress will be so inclined to intervene. On the other hand, given that the flaws cited are essentially procedural, lawmakers might be inclined to hold the current rule in place pending a new rule.

“What happens now is unclear” - Be prepared to see the 34 hour re-start and the 11 hour driving rules vanish sooner rather than later. I will monitor closely!!!

 

Fozzy: As mentioned on the other thread..... could you provide a link? It's NOT that I don't TRUST you.... :wink:

This DOES throw a curveball to us drivers and professional regulation debaters! :lol:

 

http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=61746

http://www.todaystrucking.com/news.cfm?intDocID=18230

http://www.citizen.org/autosafety/Tr...s.cfm?ID=16949

I even put the lib's version too..

 

I propose a new system. You can drive 20 hours a day and work up to 24 hours per day. 5 hour restart. That should make everybody happy. No need to thank me. You telepathic appreciation is enough.

 

You getting sunstroke down there? :P

 

I had heard they were getting ready to drop the 14 hr provision as well.
Anybody else heard this?

 

I figure this is closer to what most people have to work anyway. Unload first thing in the morning. Dink around all day for another load, drive 500 miles overnight and be ready to unload first thing in the morning. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

I rejected them way back in Oct. '05. I went local. :lol:

 

Pretty close :P
You ever run up my way? I saw my old truck that I used to drive up in sagola month or so ago and it's still kicking butt-I'm sure you've seen it around Laona town

 

No, but I'd be surprised if they did, or if they do, they'll just come up with something even worse.

I think the old rules from the 1930s were fine for a long, long, long damn time.