How is a truck driver’s work schedule related to crash risk?
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration wants the answer to that question and plans to submit an information collection request regarding hours of service.
“FMCSA needs additional data to answer important questions related to driver schedules and how these factors impact overall driver performance and fatigue,” the agency wrote. “The research requires data to be collected for hours-of-service duty logs, accident and incident data and inspection violations records.”
However, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association says the agency’s approach is off.
In formal comments filed on Friday, Jan. 16, OOIDA told the agency that a driver’s hours-of-service logs don’t tell us whether or not he or she is fatigued.
“As proposed, we do not believe the Information Collection Request (ICR) will achieve FMCSA’s objectives of answering questions related to driver schedules and how these factors impact overall driver performance and fatigue,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer wrote. “Hours-of-service logs do not reveal anything about fatigue, simply how many hours a driver was on-duty. Additionally, crash rates tend to increase during certain times of day, which may have absolutely no connection with how long a trucker has been on duty. In order for a more accurate analysis, the ICR should incorporate control groups for comparison, which are notably absent from the proposal.”
The information will be collected from 60 motor carriers, and all of the data will be collected electronically.
OOIDA said that the data is unlikely to produce any meaningful results.
“The ICR is overly reliant on telematics systems for participating carriers,” OOIDA wrote. “This creates an inherent bias that will result in a non-representative carrier study population. There’s no indication that this collection effort will target multiple carriers of different demographics and sizes. We also question if selecting just 60 carriers will produce enough diversity among participants to be truly representative of the trucking industry. We encourage FMCSA to conduct further outreach to small carriers and owner-operators who might not utilize the prescribed telematics systems.” LL
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