HOS new rules

Let me also tell you that I spent time and played with that tool way more than that what you see above. And I found many more scenarios in which it did not make any sense. I personally think that the very FMCSA tool is faulty, showing different outcomes based on the same inputs which were fed at different sequences. This is sloppiness on the part of those who developed that tool.
This is, of course, not a good thing when you don't have a solid source to reference to in case of situations when a law enforcement will question your log. I am afraid that vast majority of them are not grasping the current HOS rules with regard to how the new break splitting works and the unfortunate thing is that they are the ones who will ultimately tell you if you were in violation or not.
We may have a pretty funny paradox: falsifying your logs in order to stay compliant vs not falsifying your logs and then risk being given a false violation by an authority that does not have the slightest clue either...

The sloppiness of programming is one thing but there is also poor scenario coverage envisioned by the very FMCSA leaving a lot of loose ends. But they have always been sloppy in whatever HOS reforms they came up with.

kinda sick of all this too.

 

deleted. I don't see the point of any more illustrations of contradictory cases within the FMCSA tool and the very ELD software.
Anyway, looks like after the new updated HOS the paper logs can handle it better than ELDs.

 

deleted

 

Thanks for your answers. I would assume that the 12 hours I was at home should reset everything. But because I didn't take the required time in the sleeper berth it wouldn't really meet the letter of the law. That's why I'm glad I didn't have to try it.
I was prepared to stop earlier and use the sleeper if necessary. That would have sucked though.

 

It sure would have. Imagine a situation in which you are able to return to your home terminal (possible under the new sleeper split provision) and in order to satisfy the need to complete the 2nd break in the sleeper, instead of going home, you would need to stay in the sleeper for at least 7 more hours and if you don't, you pretty much are falsifying the logs. Absurd.

 

@TallJoe were you forgetting that the long break needs to have 7+ consecutive hours on line 2? Your figure 1 doesn't show any line 2.

After correcting my answer to that recent question (after seeing your correct answer to it), I feel like I finally understand the new split-break rule in its entirety. I get the impression that you do too, but it sounds like you still have doubts. It's actually very simple once a few key questions get cleared up.

 

I still cannot agree that 10 hours off duty cannot qualify for the second break.
In my illustration, I did take 9 hours off duty and then I followed with 7 hours in the sleeper, which should have qualified as required break but the violation is still there. A programming error? Time will tell where this is going but one thing for sure, I would want to talk to the person who designed all these newer rules and ask him/her if they considered this wide array of different possibilities that actually might take place in the real world.

 

When I entered this scenario it gave me the 14-hour violation at midnight like you're saying. Maybe you tried the following too: when I moved the 7 hours of line 2 to the beginning of the long break, it removed the violation.

But I agree with you: according to the rule as it's written, it appears to me that you should be able to do your 7 hours on line 2 say after taking six weeks off on line 1 to erase the 14-hour violation that occurred six weeks before.

So this leaves us with the question: did they simply miss adding in the language to clarify this, or is there an interpretation that we're both missing, by which the 7+ hours on line 2 must appear within a certain time frame during the long break? I sure don't see anything in the language that specifies it. Here it is again:

(ii) Sleeper berth. A driver may accumulate the equivalent of at least 10 consecutive hours off-duty by taking not more than two periods of either sleeper berth time or a combination of off-duty time and sleeper berth time if:

(A) Neither rest period is shorter than 2 consecutive hours;

(B) One rest period is at least 7 consecutive hours in the sleeper berth;

(C) The total of the two periods is at least 10 hours; and

(D) Driving time in the period immediately before and after each rest period, when added together:

(1) Does not exceed 11 hours under §395.3(a)(3); and

(2) Does not violate the 14-hour duty-period limit under §395.3(a)(2).

 

@TallJoe the only possible way I can see for our contrasting scenarios (one a violation, the other not) to be covered by merely interpreting the language correctly is for the distinction to be buried somewhere in this definition:

(B) One rest period is at least 7 consecutive hours in the sleeper berth;

Sort of like Bill Clinton's infamous "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," in this definition the FMCSA is saying the long rest period is something rather than contains something.

Offhand I don't see how this quaint observation provides any specific distinction between the two scenarios we're discussing, so I'm inclined to believe the FMCSA's rule as it's currently written, while not ambiguous, probably does not cover all cases the FMCSA meant to capture with its language.

 

Either that, or as I mentioned in one of my recent posts, you could theoretically do the 7 hours on line 2 at the end of your time off, no matter how far into the future.

On that subject, I just finished playing around with the ETHOS tool to find out how late you can start your 7 hours on line 2 and still have the tool wipe out your 14-hour violation in that scenario you described in Figure 1. Turns out the cutoff is at 9 AM---if you go to line 2 from 0900 to 1600 there's no violation, but if you're on line 2 from 0901 to 1601 the violation remains.

I don't see why the FMCSA's algorithm is choosing 0900 for that. I had a theory that didn't pan out: I was thinking maybe they required the 7 consecutive hours to occur sometime within the first 10 hours of your long break. Since 9 AM is six hours into the long break in your scenario, that theory doesn't jive with what ETHOS is saying. I plan to phone the FMCSA for clarification tomorrow.