ARLINGTON, Va. — The American Trucking Associations (ATA) is once again defending the US hours-of-service regs from a stubborn group of special interest groups that continues to challenge the rules.

The Teamsters and three other groups have once again called American HoS rules into question, despite the fact highway safety has improved since they were implemented in 2004.

The ATA has filed a motion to intervene in hopes of stemming the challenge. Specifically, the groups are claiming the eleventh hour of driving and the 34-hour reset provision are unsafe. However, in each of their previous challenges, their complaints were overturned.

In a previous ruling, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said that “The 11-hour driving rule and 34-hour restart have now been in effect since January 2004. During this five-year period – representing billions of commercial motor vehicle driver hours and hundreds of billions of miles travelled – the significant increase in truck crashes and fatalities that one would have anticipated, based on petitioners’ criticism, has simply failed to occur. Indeed, the overall large truck fatality rate is at its lowest level since records have been kept.”

Meanwhile, the ATA has addressed US HoS ‘myths’ on its Web site www.truckline.com. The association points out the rates of truck-involved fatal crashes and injuries have declined every year since the current regulations were put in place.