FMCSA Report Finds More HOS Violations After 2020 Rule Changes, Crash Effect Unclear

In May 2023, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sent Congress a report on the effects of the hours-of-service changes that took effect on September 29, 2020. The report found a rise in HOS violations after the changes but said the effect on crashes could not be determined.

The 2020 changes

The 2020 final rule revised four provisions, as summarized by FreightWaves:

• It expanded the short-haul exception from 100 to 150 air-miles and allowed a 14-hour shift for drivers using it.
• It extended the driving window during adverse driving conditions by two hours.
• It required a 30-minute break after eight cumulative hours of driving, but allowed on-duty, nondriving time to count toward it.
• It allowed drivers to meet the 10-hour off-duty requirement with at least seven hours in the sleeper berth plus at least two hours inside or outside it.

What the data showed

FMCSA compared data from January 1, 2018, through September 30, 2020, with data from October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2021, CCJ reported.

Driver inspections with at least one HOS violation rose from 7.6% to 8.5%. Inspections with at least one out-of-service HOS violation rose from 2.6% to 3.2%. FreightWaves reported that FMCSA found both increases significant.

The monthly large-truck crash rate per 100 million miles rose from 5.58 to 5.7, and the fatality rate per 100 million miles from 0.164 to 0.167. FreightWaves reported that neither increase was large enough to be statistically significant.

Confounding factors

FMCSA cautioned that "initial trends may have been confounded by the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on industry operations" and by its emergency declaration that provided HOS relief for COVID-19 relief loads. It also cited the electronic logging device rollout between December 2017 and December 2019.

The agency said a better approach would be to compare carriers that used the new provisions with those that did not, but "there is very limited data to support an in-depth analysis of the safety outcomes of carriers that took advantage of the new HOS provisions in comparison to those that did not." FMCSA said later annual reports would include more data.

Reaction

Safety advocates who had opposed the 2020 changes saw the report as a warning. "All this report does is confirm what we already knew: Driver fatigue continues to be a menace that threatens everyone on the roads," Zach Cahalan, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, told FreightWaves. He urged FMCSA to move ahead with automatic emergency braking and speed limiter rulemakings.

What it means for drivers and fleets

The May 2023 report did not change any hours-of-service rule. The short-haul, adverse-conditions, break and split-sleeper provisions remained in place. But the higher violation rates gave safety managers a reason to check how drivers were applying the more flexible provisions, particularly the split-sleeper and short-haul options, which require careful logging. With FMCSA promising follow-up analyses tied to specific violations, carriers had an incentive to make sure their own records reflected correct use of the 2020 flexibilities.