Truck Deaths Going Up, Car Deaths Going Down

On this most festive hours of service day, I think it is important to examine the performance of the Ferro / LaHood / Obama FMCSA. I have been involved in commercial motor vehicle safety for 23 years. The present day FMCSA regime is the most aggressive, hyper-regulatory version of FMCSA I have ever seen.

All of their actions, whether it be cellphone bans, CSA 2010, more restrictive hours of service limitations, or liberally putting motor carriers out of business, are supposed to be reducing truck accidents, fatalities, and injuries on the road. The Ferro / LaHood / Obama FMCSA have now been at it for going on 5 years. Have they been effective at reducing truck accidents?

I found this document on FMCSA’s website. It identifies how many fatal truck and bus crashes there are, as well as how many people were killed in these truck and bus crashes. In 2009, there were 3,619 deaths. In 2010, there were 3,957 deaths. In 2011, there were 4,018 deaths.

So, according to the raw numbers, truck deaths are increasing. Is that meaningful? After all, the economy is purportedly improving, so that would mean there are more vehicles on the road. More vehicles means more of a chance they run into each other, so naturally, highway deaths should increase. The real question is, on a per mile basis, are there more or less truck crash deaths?

In the same chart, FMCSA calculates this statistic. It uses the total number of miles driven by all vehicles, and compares it to the total number of truck crash fatalities to create a statistic. In 2009, 0.122 people were killed in truck accidents per 100 million miles driven by all vehicles. In 2010, 0.133 people were killed. In 2011, 0.136 people were killed. So, from 2009, not only are more people being killed in truck crashes, they are also being killed more frequently.

Maybe that’s just a statistical quirk. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. However, when you look at the same statistic for all vehicles, the fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled is going down. In 2009, it was 1.15, in 2010 it was 1.11, and in 2011, it was 1.10.

So, car accident fatalities are going down, but truck accident fatalities are going up. Really, close examination of FMCSA chart leads to no other conclusion. Whether you count fatal crashes, the number of fatalities, or the number of fatalities per miles driven, it all leads to the same conclusion. Truck crashes are going up, while car crashes are going down.

What could be causing this? I have no statistical evidence, simply my educated guesses. My best guess is that qualified truck drivers are leaving the industry. Truck driver is a tough job, which has only gotten tougher. Drivers are being held to ever-higher levels of responsibility, with little or no corresponding increase in compensation.

We know drivers are leaving the industry; all the anecdotal evidence points to that. All of the government initiatives are designed to rid the industry of unsafe drivers. However, what is probably happening is for each unsafe driver who leaves, two more safe drivers leave. Many drivers who have poor MVRs, or compliance records are safety risks. I believe an equal number are really perfectly safe drivers, who simply are not that good with paperwork, or following instructions. Both categories are being forced out. Plus, there are many drivers with perfect compliance and safety records who are leaving because they can no longer make a decent living, or because they are simply sick of the harassment.

The freight still needs to be moved, so who fills these empty driver seats? New drivers. Inexperienced drivers. Drivers who are not as safe as their predecessors. The result is an increase in truck crashes, fatalities and injuries. In other words, all the government hyper-regulatory activities are actually producing an opposite result of what they are supposed to do.

That’s my theory. I am not a statistician so who knows, maybe my explanation is totally wrong. Maybe the fact that truck fatalities are going up while car crash fatalities are going down over the past two years is meaningless. After all, just because Babe Ruth struck out his last time up, doesn’t make him a bad hitter. Nevertheless, my gut tells me these truck crash facts are statistically relevant. After all, if FMCSA’s hyper-regulatory approach was effective, truck crashes should be plunging, far in advance of car crashes. They are not. I know FMCSA has offered no explanation. What do you think?

New Hours of Service Rules

As I type this, FMCSA’s new hours of service rules are in effect. They went into effect at midnight on July 1, 2013. So what are the new rules? First, you may not drive if 8 hours of duty time has passed since a driver’s last off-duty or sleeper break of at least 30 minutes. Said another way, a driver must take an off-duty or sleeper break at least 30 minutes once every 8 hours of duty time. This break must be shown on the logs.

For example, a driver begins his day at 5am. By 1pm, 8 hours into his work shift, he must have taken at least a 30 minute off-duty or sleeper break. In other words, he cannot drive straight through to wherever he is going, stopping only to fuel the truck. He must stop within the first 8 hours of his shift for 30 minutes.

This 30 minute break must be off-duty or sleeper time. It cannot be on-duty time. For example, if a driver stops to fuel the truck, and it takes him 30 minutes to fuel the truck, he cannot count this as his 30 minute off-duty break. He would have to take an additional 30 minutes off-duty inside the truckstop eating lunch, playing video games, or doing other non-work activities to count as his off-duty break. He is allowed to be in the truck while taking this off-duty break. The new rules specifies this.

If you have any drivers who are using the 100 air mile exemption, they too are subject to this 30 minute off-duty break rule. In other words, a driver who does not fill out a log, but instead uses a time sheet showing the time started, time finished, and the total number of hours that day, because he only drives within a 100 air mile radius of his office, must also take a 30 minute break within the first 8 hours of duty. While he is not required to show this on his time sheet, he must still take the break.

This 30 minute break, like all off-duty and sleeper breaks of less than 8 hours, does not extend the 14 hour duty window. In essence, a driver now only has 13.5 hours to work and drive, whereas previously he had 14.

The other major change in these rules pertains to the 70 hour rule. Generally speaking, a driver cannot drive after being on-duty for 70 hours in any consecutive 8 day period. A driver used to be able to reset his 70 hour clock to zero with any 34 hour off-duty period. The new rules alter that. In order to get the reset, the 34 hour off-duty period must encompass two periods of 1am to 5am. If it does not, the off-duty period does not reset the running 70 hour clock back to zero. Furthermore, the new rules state that a reset may now only be used every 168 hours, which means once a week.

If you have a driver who ends his week early Saturday morning at 2am, he would have to wait until Monday morning at 5am to start driving again with a fresh clock, whereas under the old rules, he could have done so at noon on Sunday.

Finally, FMCSA has also expanded its power to levy giant penalties by defining a new category of hours of service violation. An “egregious” violation is one which a driver drives more than 3 hours in violation of the 11 or 14 hour rules. Should this occur, FMCSA may levy the maximum penalty for that one violation, which is $11,000 to the motor carrier, and $2,750.

It is unclear exactly what that means, as there are unanswered questions regarding their new “egregious” violations. For example, if a driver takes a 9 hour off-duty break, instead of 10, his entire next day would be in violation, as he did not get a full 10 hour break. Does that make it “egregious”, and subject to the maximum penalty? FMCSA has not answered this.

Normally, when the FMCSA comes out with a major hours of service rulemaking, as it has periodically over the past 10-12 years, it allows a few months of soft enforcement while the industry and the police learn the new rules. I would not count on that this time. FMCSA has made no comments to that effect. It has been waiting to enforce these rules for 18 months, so I doubt it will wait any longer. There is nothing soft about this present FMCSA administration. I expect these rules will be enforced strictly on July 1, 2013.

For more information, go here to FMCSA’s website, where they have everything pertaining to the new rules, including the actual regulatory text, the final rule, and logbook examples.