(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Leslie Miller on October 5.)
WASHINGTON — Congress overturned a court order and quietly reinstated a trucking industry-supported rule that allows drivers to stay behind the wheel longer between rest periods.
A federal court threw out the regulation last summer, saying the Bush administration had failed to consider its impact on truckers’ health.
The rule, which had been in effect for nine months, allows drivers to work up to 11 consecutive hours, one more hour than previously permitted, and to log a maximum of 77 hours over seven days, 17 more than before. It replaced a rule that had been in place since World War II.
In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the rule after it was challenged by the consumer group Public Citizen. The court allowed the rule to stay in place temporarily at the request of the agency that came up with it.
The temporary delay in enforcing the court order remains in effect. The new law means the longer-hours rule will be permanent.
Last week, Congress extended the rule for up to a year by adding it to a separate measure allocating money for highway construction. No announcement of the change was made. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota, signed off on it.
President Bush signed the bill into law Thursday night.
Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said the trucking industry had done an end run around the federal court.
“They didn’t want it decided on the merits. They wanted it decided politically,” she said.
Claybrook said the 30 percent increase in the amount of time a trucker can now drive makes the roads more dangerous. Fatigue is a predominant cause of large truck crashes, which kill 5,000 people a year, she said.
Transportation Department spokesman Brian Turmail said the new rule reduces the risk of crashes because it requires drivers to take at least 10 hours off between shifts, two more than before. The rule also reduces the maximum work day from 15 hours to 14.
“It’s designed to make the roads safer by significantly reducing fatigue-related crashes,” Turmail said.
The law keeps the rule in place until Sept. 30, unless the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration comes up with a new one.
Turmail said that agency, which is responsible for trucker safety, is conducting a comprehensive review of the physical effects of drivers’ operating their vehicles.
That’s what was missing from the agency’s original deliberations, the overturned court order had said.
“The agency neglected to consider a statutorily mandated factor – the impact of the rule on the health of drivers,” wrote Judge David B. Sentelle. “The FMCSA points to nothing in the agency’s extensive deliberations establishing that it considered the statutorily mandated factor of drivers’ health in the slightest.”
The trucking industry supports the law, saying that switching back and forth between old and new rules would be disruptive.
American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said in a statement that reinstating the old rule “could have caused great damage to the national economy.”
Public Citizens’ Claybrook said that going back to the previous 60-year-old rule would have little impact because most truck drivers are familiar with it.
Teamsters union spokeswoman Eugenia Gratto said the truckers prefer the original rules because they’re safer than the one that increased truckers’ hours on the road.
“We’re certainly disappointed it was slipped in the bill,” Gratto said. “A lot of congressional members didn’t know about it.”
In 2002, the trucking industry gave $377,000 to members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Industry, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics campaign watchdog group.