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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued an interim final rule last week. The rule, which was twice thrown out by the court, allows truck drivers to work as many as 84 hours a week.

"The FMCSA is more concerned about the economic viability of the trucking industry than about the safety and health of the drivers in this rulemaking," said LaMont Byrd, Teamsters Director of Safety and Health.

The rule is almost identical to the industry’s 2003 proposal, Byrd said.

Byrd said the FMCSA cherry-picked from studies supporting its position that an 11-hour driving limit did not result in more fatal crashes than the previous limit of 10 hours.

The Teamsters reviewed the information provided by FMCSA and found that it does not support the agency’s claim.

Byrd said FMCSA acknowledged in the past that the risk of a crash doubles from the 8th hour to the 9th hour of driving, and doubles again from the 10th to the 11th hour.

"The Bush administration doesn’t care if unsafe Mexican trucks or exhausted truck drivers endanger everyone traveling on our highways," said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa.

"The Bush administration could have objectively reviewed the scientific literature," Hoffa said. "It could have conducted studies to answer any open questions. It could have talked to truck drivers and safety advocates and other highway users. But it did none of those things.

"All the Bush administration did was ask the trucking industry for marching orders," Hoffa said.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) first promulgated the hours-of-service rule increasing the number of hours truckers can drive in 2003. The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the rule in 2004, but Congress reinstated it as part of the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2004.

FMCSA issued a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in January 2005, proposing a rule that was little changed from the 2003 rule that had been struck down.

On July 24, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the second time threw out the rule that increased driving time to 11 hours from 10 hours and allowed drivers to go back to work after being off duty for only 34 hours.

In the 39-page opinion, Judge Merrick Garland called the rule “arbitrary and capricious.”

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was a party in the case, joining Public Citizen and the Owner-Operator Independent Driver’s Association

The deadline for the court’s July decision to go into effect was September 14. But legal challenges pushed that deadline back.  FMCSA issued the interim final rule on December 11.

another fmcsa head banger...