FMCSA Reforms Hours of Service Requirements for Truck Drivers

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is the division of the U.S. Department of Transportation that implements policies and regulations to reduce commercial motor vehicle accidents. On May 14, 2020, the FMCSA announced changes to its hours of service (HOS) rules governing interstate truck drivers.

The changes are intended to give truck drivers increased flexibility in their hours reporting. The regulations require a commercial driver to take a mandatory 30-minute break after 8 consecutive hours on the road.

Under current rules, the break must be taken while the driver is “off duty.” Under this new regulation, the driver’s mandatory break can be satisfied when the driver is “on duty, not driving.”

What does this HOS change mean?

A truck driver is “on duty, not driving” when they wait for their shipments to be loaded or unloaded at a warehouse. These rule changes will go into effect 120 days after the changes are published in the federal register.

The final rule changes come after a long period of rulemaking and public comments. To make changes into federal administrative regulations, the FMCSA must first issue a notice of the proposed rule.

After the proposed rule is published, the American people have the opportunity to make public comments to the FMCSA regarding the proposed rule changes. According to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation Elaine Chao, the DOT received thousands of comments about these proposed Hours of Service rules.

Many truck drivers and others in the commercial transportation industry argued that truck drivers need the extra flexibility that these new rules provide.

We hope that the rulemaking procedures employed by the FMCSA, which included extensive input from highway safety advocates, will ensure that these changes have no effect on safety for all motorists.

How will this change impact the trucking industry?

These Hours of Service rules changes have been in motion for years. However, the FMCSA has recently issued a number of emergency rollbacks of certain federal safety regulations in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

There is no doubt that America’s truck drivers have played a critical role in sustaining our economy during the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19. However, as highway safety advocates, we are concerned whenever there are rollbacks or deregulation of the safety rules that all interstate truck drivers and trucking companies must follow.

Unfortunately, over our many years of handling cases against trucking companies, we have found that there are a significant number of bad drivers and companies in the industry.

Several trucking companies that have caused catastrophic injuries to our clients believed that the FMCSA’s safety rules didn’t apply to them. The decisions made by those companies led directly to their unqualified and dangerous drivers harming others.

At Shannon Law Group, our hope is that these new Hours of Service regulation changes have the desired effect. We want a win/win for truck drivers and the motorists sharing the road with them.

However, over the next couple of years, the data may show that companies and drivers have taken unreasonable advantage of this new flexibility. As a direct result, more people could be injured or killed by fatigued drivers. If this scenario comes true, the HOS rule changes must be revisited.