The American Trucking Associations has accused the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration of manipulating its own crash numbers to make driver fatigue seem like a more significant cause of truck crashes so its new hours of service proposal could pass the required cost/benefit analysis.


"Since the current HOS rules were introduced in 2003, the trucking industry has achieved a continually improving safety record, reaching the lowest fatality and injury rate levels in recorded history," said ATA President Bill Graves "It is troubling that this complex, restrictive set of proposed rules is founded on what appears to be incorrect analysis and inflated math."

In the HOS proposal's Regulatory Impact Analysis (the cost/benefit justification), ATA says, FMCSA inflated its estimation of the percentage of fatigue-related crashes in two ways. First, it overstated the percentage of single-vehicle truck crashes (which are more likely to be fatigue-related) compared to multi-vehicle crashes. More specifically, FMCSA approximately doubled the weight given to single-vehicle truck crashes in its large truck crash causation study.

Second, FMCSA appears to be treating any crash in which fatigue is listed as an "associated factor" as a fatigue-caused crash. "That approach is not just contrary to prior research methods, it is also at odds with the Agency's own report to Congress," ATA contends, "in which it stated that for associated factors: 'No judgment is made as to whether any factor is related to the particular crash, just whether it was present.'"

Examples of "associated factors" in the Large Truck Crash Causation Study include emotion/experience, traffic, vehicle, roadway, weather and speed/distance. The FMCSA's report to Congress on the LTCCS in 2006 notes that each of these "associated factors" has a higher prevalence as a factor than does "fatigue" but should not be read as a "principal cause" of a crash.

ATA says these data manipulations have allowed FMCSA to nearly double its analysis of the number of truck-involved crashes that are likely caused by fatigue.

In past rulemakings, the agency consistently has found fatigue to be a causal factor in just 7 percent of crashes, ATA says. As recently as 2008, the FMCSA noted that while the best data on fatigue as a factor in fatal truck accidents showed only a 2.2 percent relationship, it remained confident that its "7 percent figure is accurate."

"Now, apparently to assist it in reaching a desired result the Agency has ignored the real world data and its past pronouncements and adopted a 13 percent fatigue factor," ATA said in a news release.