Updated September 25, 2020, to correct math mistakes and better account for the 34-hour restart’s slight bonus-time effect if stars align in a schedule.
In Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety’s announcement of its petition to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals aimed at challenging the hours of service changes going into effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time next week Tuesday (that’s of course late Monday for the rest of the country), Public Citizen Litigation Group Attorney Adina Rosenbaum provided a bit of context for involvement in the suit. “The FMCSA,” Rosenbaum said, “is supposed to protect truck drivers and the public from unsafe driving conditions, but this rule does the opposite and puts the health and safety of these workers at risk.”
True or false?
We’ll know soon enough, I suppose, given the fast-approaching implementation date, but I’m inclined to wager that most of you might well guess the latter.
What’s not debatable is the answer to the second question in this hours pop quiz, of sorts. Rosenbaum’s featured quote in Advocates’ posted announcement of the pursuit of litigation continued with a shot aimed at the existing rules: “Current HOS rules already allow for 11 hours of driving per workday. On this existing schedule, truck drivers can be on the road up to 77 hours in seven days, nearly double the average American work week.”
True or false?
False. Well, mostly — and thanks for the readers for correcting me here on the original version of this story, as I failed my own prescription for dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. A longtime owner-operator, who wished to remain anonymous, gamed maximum driving hours out over an eight-day period, assuming you have a full 70 available and you’re starting at midnight with full fuel tanks. He used the current sleeper split to avoid the 30-minute break and logged a quarter-hour on-duty not driving for the pretrip inspection daily, with another quarter hour fuel after every second day. This is all hypothetical, of course, but would satisfy most views of the rules to a tee, he said — stars would really have to align just about perfectly to pull that exact kind of schedule off. No unload/load assist — not, of course, reflecting any kind of real-world scenario.
