Trucking news and briefs for Thursday, July 6, 2023:
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced Thursday it has denied a request from truck driver Matthew Killmer that would have allowed him and other truck drivers to shorten the required seven-consecutive-hour sleeper-berth period to five hours to accumulate the required 10-hour rest period under split-sleeper logbook rules.
Current regulations allow drivers to split sleeper-berth time into 8/2 or 7/3 segments to satisfy the 10-hour break requirement, as long as driving time before and after each rest period, when added together, does not exceed 11 hours or exceed the 14-hour on-duty limit.
Killmer, in his request, said in the current 10-hour break and 8/2 and 7/3 sleeper-berth splits FMCSA has not "considered the serious amount of lost time" a truck operator experiences on a weekly basis. "Already commercial vehicle operators face lost time from family, hardships with safe parking, lost income/revenue and much more. The 5/5 sleeper-berth split may not alleviate some of what they face, yet it will effectively help them in safe truck parking and lost income/revenue."
[Related: Rolling the 14: How to pull off the split-sleeper in the hours of service]
In denying the request, FMCSA said Killmer “failed to establish that he would likely maintain a level of safety equivalent to, or greater than, the level achieved without the exemption.” The agency added that in its most recent hours of service changes in 2020, it modified the split-sleeper rules to the current 8/2 or 7/3 splits “to provide more flexibility for drivers.”
FMCSA said that it considered other split configurations, like Killmer’s 5/5 request, but found “there is no clear evidence -- to say nothing of a scientific consensus -- that a 6-hour (or shorter) sleeper-berth period is long enough to prevent cumulative fatigue. That is especially obvious since drivers cannot be expected to fall asleep immediately.” The agency added that regulators believed the 7-hour rule “allows enough time for drivers to relax, de-compress, and obtain more than 6 hours of sleep.”
