The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has concluded data collection for the congressionally-mandated study on the effects of hours-of-service restart regulations.

Following congressional requirements, the study team collected data comparing the five-month work schedules of drivers to assess safety-critical events such as crashes, driver fatigue, and short-term health outcomes of drivers operating under HOS 34-hour restart provisions that were in effect from July 1, 2013 and Dec. 15, 2014. The study looks at the operational, safety, health, and fatigue impacts of two particular provisions of the restart study. 

Drivers from a variety of fleet sizes and operations provided a substantial amount of data during the study period, according to the FMCSA. More than 220 drivers contributed data as they drove their normal routes. The data included over 3,000 driver duty cycles captured by electronic logging devices, over 75,000 driver alertness tests and more than 22,000 days of driver sleep data.

Now that the collection period is over, the agency will analyze the data and work toward completing a final report by the end of the year.

The 34-hour restart provision was suspended in Dec. 2014 as part of a bill signed by President Obama and pushed for by the ATA. The restart suspension was put in place to allow the government to properly evaluate the rule change to determine if it was possibly increasing driver risk.