Trucking news and briefs for Wednesday, May 10, 2023:
During the pre-change period, an average of 7.6% of driver inspections had at least one HOS violation, FMCSA found. During the post-change period, an average of 8.5% of driver inspections had least one HOS violation. The drop in HOS enforcement in April of 2020 reflects the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on roadside enforcement activities, which rebounded shortly thereafter.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said in a new report to Congress that since the 2020 changes to the hours-of-service regulations took effect, HOS violations have seen a significant uptick, while crashes and fatalities have held mostly flat.
The agency said, however, that “initial trends may have been confounded by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on industry operations and FMCSA’s emergency declaration that provided HOS regulatory relief" to truckers hauling "in support of COVID-19 relief efforts.” That conclusion in some ways echoed FMCSA's report to Congress on the effectiveness of the electronic logging device mandate,
[Related: FMCSA punts on ELDs' safety effectiveness in Congressional report]
The hours-changes report was required by a Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. It requested that FMCSA conduct an analysis by comparing “safety data, including but not limited to, the number of crashes, crash type, number of fatalities categorized by occupant type, number of serious injuries, the rate of involvement that large trucks have accidents, and the time of day and on what type of roadway the accident occurred.”
In the report, FMCSA analyzed inspection and crash data from Jan. 1, 2018, through Sept. 30, 2020, for the pre-change period, and Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021, for the post-change period.
