BREAKING NEWS: Proposed HOS rule leaves open for comment 10- or 11-hour driving time,

We need another one under politics! or make the thread do a curve.

I think I'll wait until the final ruling before I try to comprehend all this.
Rules are subject to change at the last second.

Look at the unemployment comp ruling. It changed at the last second and all the 99'ers were shocked. Including my sister. Now on my limited income right now, I'll have to help her survive. Thanks Obama, you just doubled the number of people that can't spend money and replenish the economy.

 

Calm down. I didn't see it.

 

And to think, WE, the taxpayers, pay people to come up with rules like these. Talk about the "dumbing down" of America, this is unbelievable. A 3rd grade school child could have done better.

 

99 weeks! I find it hard to believe that even in these hard times someone cant find some kind of job within 99 weeks!

 

Why not regulate How shippers receivers operate. They more often than not cause a driver to be fatigued. Improve roadside parking so we can legally park when we are tired. Providing Cmv lanes instead of hov lanes would probably cut cmv involved accidents in half.

 

My .02:

The new rules proposed are a reaction to the problems with the current rules as expressed by truck drivers and the "safety advocates" such as PATT and CRASH. As usual with your average governmental body, they got it all wrong.

The mandatory 1 hour break during your 11 hour driving period is undoubtedly a reaction to the drivers who complained during FMCSA's listening tour about the inflexibility of the HOS, and how most of us used to take a nap during the day to refresh ourselves but now are forced to climb in, shut the door and get our 11 in as fast as possible just in case we have a delay or two. So, in typical elitist fashion, they decided to mandate the break in driving hours, but not drop the insipid 14 hour "window".

The 34 hour restart provisions are a reaction to the safety morons. One of PATT and CRASH's big ####### has been that the 34 hour restart allowed drivers WAAYYY more than 70 hours in an 8 day period. Their view is that the average truck driver would go out, run his 70 as fast as humanly possible, take a 34 and run 70 really fast again. Now, other than a few drop/hook operations out here how many drivers can realistically do this? Freight flows and timing mitigate this being any real problem whatsoever.

A question arises when reading this:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica] and to complete all on-duty work-related activities within 13 hours to allow
for at least a one-hour break. It also leaves open for comment whether[/FONT]

The HOS has never regulated line 4, on duty not driving. All rules have restricted driving activities, not other work-related duties. In theory, you can be on line 4 for 24 consecutive hours, but you wouldn't be able to drive until you finished a 10 hour break, if you still have hours left on your 70. In the same vein, you can finish your driving time at the 14 hour mark and have a 1/4 hr. post trip inspection, fueling or trailer drop and still be perfectly legal as long as you don't drive after. Is that now a violation? By the language above, it now would be.

The frustrating thing about all of this is that they're chasing a phantom; the fatigued truck driver. While that may have been a problem in years past, I would argue it hasn't been a major problem for at least 10 years or better. Truck accidents have trended down, fatalities per million miles have reached rock bottom, studies show 70% of all car/big truck crashes are 100% the fault of the car driver, but we still chase shadows in the name of safety. Trying to turn human beings into robots who can turn themselves on and off at a whim is elitist hubris writ large.

Looks like driving schools are going to have to hire quantum physicists and statistics majors in order to teach Logging 101....................

 

The really annoying thing is that the accident stats for years have shown that car drivers are at-fault in the majority (68% area) of accidents between cars and big trucks. The other really annoying fact is that the stats for sleepiness/drowsiness being cited as a factor in accidents between cars and big trucks show an even higher percentage of the car drivers at fault (one year was a 94% rate of car drivers being cited). Yet they continue to regulate the crap out of the ones that get their food and toys to the stores so they can spend their over-inflated salaries!

 

Agreed. I figured one at 48 hours: the 34 starts @6 a.m. Monday and ends @4 p.m. Tuesday. But you'd have to show two consecutive midnight-to-six periods, so you couldn't start again until 6 a.m. Wednesday. This is restful? From the people who brought you the 14-hour rule.

 

Sounds like the ATA already has a lawsuit in mind, this will be tied up in the courts for years to come.

 

Not as bad as I would have expected, but still trying to visualize what it would do to me. I run a dedicated/regional thing with weekends off, so my situation is a little different than the average OTR driver.

That mandatory break won't hurt me all that much, as far as time goes, since I usually do several LUL during my shift. At least one of them will be close enough that I can just sit a little while longer and get it in. Still, I can think of a lot of situations where losing an hour would have made my load late and a lot more where that hour would have kept me from making it to a truck stop at the end of the day.

I don't know how everyone else is, but taking that break will not necessarily make me more alert. Sure, if I am tired and I take a nap it will freshen me up a bit. But, most days I get a decent nights sleep and just sitting around for an hour is going to get me bored, which will make me sleepy. I can see it having the opposite effect on me than what they were going for.

Why would they just not say we have the option to stop the 14 for a limited amount of time, like an hour or two, if we are in the sleeper? Let us get that nap if we need it, without the penalties that keep us from doing it now, but don't make us take it if we don't need it.


The 34 proposal is what is really getting me, and I don't understand it.

Why the midnight to 6am thing? I run at night, so my body is not on a typical schedule. But now I have to sit around for another half a day to make my 34 count, then I'd start that day at a time my body is totally out of sync with?

I sorta get the point of if, but they totally disregard that some of us drivers do not run on a "typical" schedule, based on the fact that we have to do much of our work before we get to deliver to somewhere that runs on that 9-5 schedule. Not to mention that there is a lot more to being tired than just hours worked, when you consider the stress involved with driving through rush hour in a city and backing into some of these crazy docks off the street in heavy traffic, you can see why some of us prefer to run when we are the only ones on the road. If they are trying to get us to all run on a "normal" schedule, it shows a total lack of understanding of the trucking industry.

Other thing is this 7 day thing between resets. I am really hoping that I misunderstand what they are saying about it.

Say I take a reset on Saturday and Sunday. Does that mean that I can take another one the next Saturday and Sunday, or does that mean I can not start my next one until Sunday night?

My interpretation is that you can not start your new one until 7 days after your last one ended. Meaning that if I take one this weekend, I can not start my next one until the following Monday.

I really hope that I have this one wrong, as it would kill one of the main points of weekends off. I mean, if they are trying to get us to work a normal 9-5 schedule, why screw with our resets on the weekends?

As it looks, even though I am home for at least 48 hours, I may just have to give up on the whole reset thing and start keeping track of my 70.


All I can see this doing is costing me money and limiting my miles I can run, possibly greatly increasing my stress level, yet not making me better rested in any way.

Of course, I do admit that my situation is a slight bit unique. Still waiting to see what it does to the typical OTR driver before I get a real opinion about it.