Though the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is required by the law to produce a Federal Register notice to alert drivers, enforcers and other stakeholders of the change, the stay of enforcement is now legally in effect, meaning truck operators no longer have to abide by the restart provisions put in place in July 2013.
Aside from the suspension of the restart provisions, however, the law requires FMCSA to study the rules’ impacts on drivers, carriers and safety. The agency must present a report to Congress concluding the rules boost safety before the restart provisions can go back into effect.
Research is directed to determine whether the 2013 restart provisions “provide a greater net benefit for the operational, safety, health and fatigue impacts” they cause, according to the bill.
The funding law requires FMCSA to study two groups of drivers (“each large enough to produce statistically significant results,” the bill notes) — one that operates under post-2013 restart restrictions and one that operates under pre-2013 restart provisions. And after at least five months of study, the agency should compare the groups based on “safety critical events” such as crashes and the overall fatigue levels of the drivers studied.
The law stipulates that the agency use drivers from a range of applications and fleet sizes and gauge their fatigue levels using Psychomotor Vigilance Tests, actigraph watches and cameras and “other on-board monitoring systems that record or measure safety critical events and driver alertness,” according to the law’s text.
Upon completion of the data collection phase, FMCSA must produce a final report to send to a review panel consisting of “individuals with relevant medical and scientific expertise.”
