At a Senate hearing on truck safety Tuesday, regulators and trucking trade groups offered testimony to lawmakers in the Senate’s commerce committee about what could be done to improve truck safety in the U.S.
Here’s a roundup of some of the statements made by participating parties:
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
In what was likely her last appearance before Congress before leaving her post as head of FMCSA, Administrator Anne Ferro spoke on a bevy of topics, including the 2013 hours-of-service rule (which she stood behind), the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, electronic logging devices, sleep apnea, driver training requirements and more.
Hours-of-service items, however, took up the bulk of her testimony. She defended the agency’s 2013-implemented hours-of-service regulations, again reiterating that it was the result of “extensive research and data.”
She also reiterated this oft-cited point: The agency, per its analysis, only sees the 2013’s 34-hour restart provisions affecting 15 percent of drivers who must keep records of duty status.
“Whatever the limits on driving and work hours may be, if the motor carrier and driver plan their schedule so tightly that the driver can barely complete the run legally, then problems with completing runs inevitably will occur,” Ferro said. “That fact cannot support any rollback of the current rule.”
