(The International Brotherhood of Teamsters distributed the following news release on April 24.)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is issuing new truck safety regulations that ignore a vital element— safety. Under the new regulations, hours of service (HOS) rules that govern actual driving time will be increased to 11 hours from 10 hours.
“Working behind the wheel of a truck is hard,” said James P. Hoffa, Teamsters General President. “These new rules from the DOT will only increase driver fatigue, and we know that fatigue creates danger on the highways.”
In November 2002, a union dissident group along with other interest groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to direct the U.S. Department of Transportation to issue final rules on a number of outstanding issues, including hours of service rules. In February 2003, the DOT settled the suit by agreeing to issue the series of rules (including HOS) within the next year and a half, beginning with a rule on drivers’ hours of service.
The new rules allow drivers to drive 11 hours and work a total of 14 hours after 10 consecutive hours off-duty. Current law allows 10 hours of driving time within a 15-hour on-duty period after 8 hours of off-duty time. DOT estimates that 755 fatalities and 19,705 injuries result from fatigued drivers each year on U.S. roads.
“The lawsuit that caused this ruling was ill-conceived,” said Mike Mathis, Teamsters Government Affairs Director. “The Teamsters Union agrees that the DOT was long overdue on issuing new safety rules. However, the approach taken by the union dissidents and others has resulted in rules that will hurt, not help, Teamster members. This lawsuit has undermined our efforts to work with the DOT in establishing new rules that help everyone.”
Issuance of the new safety regulations will now be followed by a 30-day public comment period. The Teamsters Union will file comments outlining their opposition with the DOT.
Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents more than 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States and Canada.