Reaction to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration latest HOS proposal isn't exactly inspiring.
The American Trucking Associations panned the news last Friday, saying the proposal is "overly complex, chock full of unnecessary restrictions on professional truck drivers and, at its core, would substantially reduce trucking's productivity."

Public Citizen weighed in saying while the proposed rule is an improvement over the rule adopted by the Bush Administration, it does not go far enough to ensure public safety.

"The current rule allows tired truckers to drive excessively long hours and is opposed by safety organizations, truck safety groups, labor unions, truck crash victims and survivors as well as many truckers who are forced to work sweatshop hours," the group noted in its press release. "The new proposed rule does not eliminate anti-safety provisions that allow truck drivers to drive and work long hours, get less rest and drive while fatigued. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that fatigue is a factor in 30 to 40 percent of all truck crashes."

Public Citizen says it's not happy that the proposed rule will retain a 34-hour restart mechanism. While acknowledging the new version of the rule would require that truckers take the 34-hours over two nighttime sleep periods from midnight to 6 a.m., the group says it still supports a 48-hour restart provision, "in order to give truck drivers adequate time off for rest and recovery from the grueling job of operating a truck, as well as loading and unloading freight," the release notes. "The typical work week for most Americans is 40 hours with a full two days off for the weekend but the new proposal unfortunately perpetuates excessive working and driving hours for truckers."

Public Citizen also reiterated its call for an industry-wide EOBR mandate.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance noted in a release published the day after the proposal was announced that while carriers on both sides of the border expected the worst, the proposed rules … are perhaps not as bad as many thought they would be.

David Bradley, CTA's CEO, noted he was pleased the "restart" or "rest and recovery" provisions (which had their genesis in Canada, where they were first developed and proposed by the Canadian Trucking Alliance in the early 1990s) are to be retained with slight changes.

"Clearly, the FMCSA wants to try and ensure that a driver gets two consecutive night-time sleeps before he or she can reset their clock. That may create some logistical complexities; we'll have to take a closer look."

The standard reset provision in Canada is 36-hours.

Bradley says he has detected no groundswell of desire by Canadian governments to change the Canadian federal hours of service rule to mirror those of the United States.

"Things could change, but I just don't sense that the provinces or Transport Canada want to open that can of worms again -- at least not right now," he said. "The current direction from a number of provinces and industrial sectors in Canada is for more flexibility, not less. A number of sectors are advocating for or in support of exemptions or other forms of greater flexibility. A number of provinces have yet to adopt the hours of service rule agreed to in 2007."

Still, he says, "it will behoove us to take a good long look at the US proposals to determine what impact they will have in terms of compatibility with the Canadian rules and some of the new provisions - such as extending the fixed working window by two hours twice a week and allowing drivers to count some time spent parked in their trucks toward off-duty hours - are things that would be of interest to the industry in Canada."