Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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LEADING NEWS, TRUCKING MARKET CONDITIONS AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS P resident Obama on July 31 signed into law a bill to extend funding for the Highway Trust Fund for three months. The previous extension, signed at the end of May, extended funding through July 31. The latest one was Congress' 34th stopgap surface transportation measure in a decade despite the introduction of several long- term bills. Obama signed the latest patch into law after the House passed the extension 385-34 and the Senate later passed it 91-4. Meanwhile, the Senate also passed a comprehensive six-year highway bill, but further work on the DRIVE Act was postponed until September when Congress was set to reconvene from its August recess. When lawmakers resume work, they'll have about six weeks to either pass a long-term highway bill or clear another short-term stopgap. The DRIVE Act, a six-year $275 billion highway bill, would be the first multiyear bill since 2012's MAP-21. – James Jaillet A new congressional report said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has limited ability to truly evaluate the 2013-implemented hours-of-service rule because its 2014 study did not meet research standards and has data constraints. The Government Accountability Office report covers only the agency's 2014-released study on the hours rule, and not the one currently in the works that was required by a December 2014 U.S. Department of Transportation funding act that also sus- pended certain portions of the 2013 rule. The U.S. House transportation committee asked GAO to review FMCSA's 2014 study on the 2013 HOS rule. GAO reported that the agency had done an acceptable job designing the study and analyzing data but had not used guidance outlining specific standards for con- ducting the study and reporting its results. GAO said FMCSA failed to report several limitations and had not fully linked results to its overall conclusions. While the agency agreed with GAO's recommendations, it maintained it had adhered to standard research principles and practices in its January 2014 HOS study. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx outlined what DOT took as a positive from the report, namely that it "pro- vides further evidence that the changes FMCSA made to the HOS rules improve highway safety by saving lives and lower- ing the risk of driver fatigue. This reinforces our belief that these lifesaving measures are critical to keeping people safe on the roads." GAO said FMCSA lacked methodology supporting the study's objectives and cited the 2013 requirement that drivers take two nighttime breaks in their restart as an example. The study should have compared driver fatigue after a one-night and a two-night restart, but instead it compared drivers with a one-night restart to those with two or more nights of rest, which could have skewed the results, GAO wrote. It also had not completely met certain standards regarding reporting limitations and link- ing the conclusions to the results. Therefore, the agency's conclusion about the extent to which crash risk is reduced by the HOS rule may have been overstated, the report said. GAO noted that the President signs highway patch, extending funding through October 10 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2015 GAO: FMCSA study on 2013 hours rule flawed, safety conclusions could be inaccurate Scan the QR code with your smartphone or visit ccjdigital.com/news/subscribe-to-news- letters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newsletter lled with news, analy- sis, blogs and market condition articles. Continued on page 20 GAO found drivers who worked less than 65 hours weekly changed their schedules because of the 2013 hours rule, a result not anticipated by FMCSA.