Four new fatigue studies have surfaced, and on Friday afternoon the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reopened the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking comment period to allow for review of the newly presented research.


FMCSA says it is committed to receiving and analyzing all public comments on the studies before it completes its work on the final rule. The agency has extended the final rule publication date and extended the comment period, but it did not say how long the additional comment period would last. FMCSA must post a final rule by July 26. The previous HOS comment period closed on March 4.

The American Trucking Associations posted a statement on its website Friday evening, saying it was skeptical about the 11th-hour appearance of the research.

"We are intrigued by today's unusual announcement that the Department of Transportation is reopening its hours-of-service docket in order to insert into the record and seek comment on a number of DOT-selected studies," ATA president, Bill Graves, noted in the statement. "ATA believes decisions about the future of this important regulation should be made based on sound science and research and not political pressure, but we're clearly skeptical of new research that has been discovered or generated by DOT at the '11th hour.'"

In general, the studies indicate that safety risk increases as work and driving time increases.

Opposition to the current HOS proposal is widespread, coming from industry, law enforcement, and many in the sleep and fatigue research community. ATA opposes the proposal, and has called for a thorough review of the science behind the proposal, because of "serious questions about the research and data used by FMCSA to justify its proposed changes to the regulations.

"Given that DOT, according to a key sleep and health researcher, may have misused scientific data as part of this process; ATA will carefully review this new information. We hope and trust that FMCSA will give stakeholders adequate time to evaluate it," Graves says.

The new research studies are available on the FMCSA website, here.