Four major safety advocacy groups Thursday filed a petition asking the government to reconsider its controversial final hours of service rule.


Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Public Citizen, the Truck Safety Coalition and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters filed a petition for reconsideration with the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, saying the rules "can compel professional truck drivers to work and drive 19th century sweatshop hours."

In its final rule published on Nov. 19, the groups say, FMCSA ignored two court decisions that have been issued since 2003. The first decision found that the agency had not adequately taken driver health into consideration. The second decision vacated the 11-hour driving and 34-hour restart provisions of FMCSA's revised 2005 final rule that raised the limits for daily and weekly driving and on-duty hours. Although courts have twice ordered the agency to reconsider the rule, FMCSA has re-issued virtually the same rule after each court order, claim the safety groups.

"Under this rule, companies can force interstate truck drivers to work and drive grueling hours that are unheard of in other U.S. workplaces in the 21st century," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen and former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "These trucks are rolling sweatshops."

The American Trucking Associations calls says the petition is "ill-advised and raises no new substantive safety issues."

The petition asks FMCSA to reconsider the regulation "based on numerous errors and misrepresentations of research findings clearly showing that much longer working and driving hours will inevitably produce severely fatigued drivers who also can suffer serious health problems from excessively long working hours," according to a statement from the safety groups.

ATA says the current Hours of Service rules, which have been in effect since January 2004, have never, contrary to claims from Public Citizen and others, been overturned in court on substantive grounds related to their safety impact. Rather, prior legal rulings have been based on procedural problems. FMCSA has corrected those procedural errors and earlier this year, the D.C. Circuit rebuffed a Public Citizen substantive challenge to the 11- and 34-hour provisions as part of the agency's Interim Final HOS Rule.

ATA points out that the current rules replaced decades-old rules and made them safer by shortening the drivers' work day by an hour or more and increasing the drivers' required daily rest period by two hours, or 25 percent. The rules also permit a restart of the weekly HOS "clock" if a driver remains off duty for 34 hours or more. The restart is intended to encourage drivers to take extended periods of off-duty rest time at home.

The current rules were designed to complement the human body's 24-hour circadian rhythm, and while these rules have been in effect, large truck crash rates, injury rates and death rates have fallen to all-time lows, ATA notes.

Claybrook said Thursday in an interview on Sirius Satellite Radio's "The Lockridge Report" that it is likely Public Citizen will file suit against the government over the final rule if this petition is not granted. When asked what she would like to see in hours of service rules for truckers, Claybrook said an eight-hour daily limit, with truckers being paid overtime when they go beyond that.

To read the petition, go to www.citizen.org/documents/HOSPetition.pdf.