Last week we outlined the changes made by the Department of Transportation for truck drivers on December 22, 2011 in an ongoing effort to keep our clients informed about important trucking news. This week, I will break down the law changes in order to show how they affect truckers, which changes are positive, and which ones did not go far enough.
Let me begin with a disclaimer: safety is always a priority when it comes to trucking. Being in the commercial truck insurance industry, I have seen my fair share of life-ending accidents and any measures that could be used to reduce those are valuable.
The first alteration in the law was to shorten the work week from 82 hours to 70 hours. The idea is that this reduction will give workers more time to rest and relieve the burden of being overworked. The downside is that it also reduces the potential earnings of hourly truck drivers who relied on those additional 12 per week to pay their expenses. The Federal Motor Carriers Safety Association (FMCSA) appears to have accounted for this objection with the “34-hour restart.”
As its name implies, the “34-hour restart” lets drivers restart their work weeks if they spend 34 consecutive hours resting. This provision allows drivers to still get their required 82 hours in a week, while also forcing them to take a break in the middle.
We think that this is a good compromise; it doesn’t hurt truck driver earnings and increases road safety by mandating a break.
Another change is the required 30 minute break after an eight-hour shift of unimpeded driving. This seems like a fair compromise, because thirty minutes is not too long to throw drivers off schedule, but long enough to recharge the mind.
One safety concern regards the continued use of the 11-hour work day. It was believed that this number would be reduced to 10-hours, a more manageable maximum time to be driving, but the 30 minute rest seems to be the compromise to maintain the 11-hour max. There is enough evidence from sleep studies to suggest that 11 hours is too long to work and a change should be made.
So what are the overall opinions about the DOT’s changes to trucker laws? They are better at reducing fatigue to drivers, but ignore the bigger issues. Truck drivers still do not get paid overtime for exceeding 40 hours per week, forcing them to push themselves beyond their limits. These changes just add more regulation to an already over-regulated industry. They also require the use of additional drivers to make up lost hours from the reduced work week, putting more inexperienced truck drivers onto the road.
While the intentions behind the changes may have been for driver safety, the results hurt the wallets of truckers and don’t make a big enough impact. Hopefully new regulation will replace the old laws to decrease accidents.
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