Just when you thought FMCSA could finally begin the process of putting together a final ruling on the proposed changes to truck drivers’ hours-of-service (HOS) rules, the Administration announced that it is reopening the comment period yet again. The reason they’re doing this so late in the game? Four newly discovered fatigue studies — research that largely points to a correlation between increased driving time with increased safety risks.

I know I speak for many in the trucking industry when I say that I believe these new findings, if history repeats itself, will simply provide four more opportunities to misconstrue the facts surrounding the relationship between drive time, driver fatigue and safety.

The issue at hand — the one that is hotly debated and mired in conflicting data — is whether drivers, and thus the motoring public, are safe. The answer to that question is unequivocally, yes. In fact, in 2009 the trucking industry enjoyed its safest year on record since 1975. That means we experienced our best year in more than three decades, including four years with the current 11-hour drive time in place. What matters, and what our commitment to safety has yielded, is a dramatically decreased truck-involved fatality rate. In early April, the Federal Highway Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated that this rate decreased by 14.1 percent between 2008 and 2009, alone. This speaks to our resolve to keep our drivers and the motoring public safe — through programs, training and the establishment of corporate cultures built on safety — without sacrificing what we need as a country to keep our economy moving.

With just weeks to go until the final ruling must be made on July 26, we remain vigilant in our stance that the current rule is not broken and should not be changed. And though we now have more information to digest in less time, we will do so thoroughly and with the expectation that the true facts will rise to the surface of this debate and put it to rest.

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