ATA recommends sticking with current US HoS

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ARLINGTON, Va. — The American Trucking Associations (ATA) says it looks forward to taking part in the US Federal Motor Carrier Administration’s (FMCSA) rulemaking process as the agency re-evaluates the hours-of-service rules that have been in place there since 2004.

 

It was announced yesterday that the FMCSA would bow to pressure from special interest groups and revisit the hours-of-service, possibly even rewriting the rules from scratch. It has nine months to conduct the review and 21 months to rewrite the rules, if it chooses to do so.

 

The ATA has argued in favour of the current rules, pointing to the industry’s safety record as proof they are working.

 

“Safety in the trucking industry has greatly improved while operating under the current hours-of-service rules,” said ATA president and CEO Bill Graves. “Over the past five years we’ve seen a strong decline in truck-involved crashes on our nation’s highways.”

 

In fact, truck-involved fatalities in US roads have gone down 19% since the new rules took effect in 2004 and the number of injuries has decreased 13%, ATA points out. Meanwhile, the volume of heavy trucks on US roads surged during the same period.

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