Trucking Reforms Steer Straight Into Backlash

The Clinton administration’s bid to change Depression-era regulations that allow tired truckers to stay on the road is in danger of being scuttled by Congress.

An industry outcry and a federal agency’s missteps have combined to threaten reforms that safety experts say are long overdue.

Truck collisions remain the most feared of highway crashes, claiming more than 5,000 lives a year, with 75% of those victims in cars and other passenger vehicles. Drowsy truckers cause about 750 deaths and 20,000 injuries annually, the government estimates.

Current federal work rules, which in some cases allow drivers to spend 16 hours behind the wheel in a 24-hour period, are widely seen as part of the problem. About 35% of truckers report dozing at the wheel at least once a month, according to a recent university study.

Earlier this year, the Transportation Department proposed rules that would set a daily driving limit of 12 hours. The rules also would mandate electronic on-board recorders for long-distance truckers to prevent the common practice of false entries by drivers in their logbooks.

But the department said it wanted to limit driving hours not only for long-haul trucking, which accounts for most fatigue-related crashes, but also for bus lines, utilities, grocery delivery and other businesses that have not had significant driver fatigue problems. That turned out to be a major miscalculation.

Complaints Fuel Regulatory Backlash

These companies complained loudly, helping to generate 1,000 letters a day to regulators. Congress, which controls the regulators’ purse strings, also is feeling the backlash.

Now reformers are on the defensive.

“I don’t think they anticipated the virulence of the opposition’s response,” said Gerald Donaldson, research director for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a coalition of groups that supports stricter limits on how long truckers can drive. “This rule is not going anywhere soon. It is another coda in a long symphony that has yet to reach its crescendo.”

Long-haul trucking companies also complained, arguing that the federal mandate for more rest will disrupt their industry in several ways. For example, since most drivers are paid by the mile, the companies maintain that their workers will lose income and defect to other industries.

At the same time, to keep goods moving while drivers rest more, the industry said it will have to hire tens of thousands of inexperienced drivers--compromising safety and raising costs.

The government conceded that nearly 50,000 new drivers will be needed if the new rules are implemented, but it said they would have to meet the same safety standards as current drivers. Federal officials said much of the need for new drivers could be eliminated by cutting the large amount of unproductive time drivers now spend waiting for their vehicles to be loaded and unloaded. And independent economists said that paying truckers more--earnings average about $35,000 a year--would improve safety and benefit society. But these counter arguments have had little effect.

“In my 24 years in this industry, I have never seen such emotion associated with any rule-making or legislative undertaking,” said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn. “Words alone cannot sufficiently convey our disappointment.”

Such complaints have gotten a sympathetic hearing from Congress in an election year.

“This is a classic case of trying to provide regulation in a very complex society,” said Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.), a member of the House Transportation Committee. “If we don’t do this well, we are going to suffer the consequences. It will be ‘Congress has done this to us.’ ”

The Senate has voted to cut off Transportation Department funds needed to finish implementing the regulations. Lawmakers in the House are expected to vote on the issue after Congress returns from its Independence Day recess.

The White House, while saying that it “strongly objects” to congressional interference with regulators, has stopped short of threatening a veto on the funding cutoff.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration--a Transportation Department agency created by Congress last year to improve truck safety--is already backpedaling.

Deputy Administrator Clyde Hart told Congress recently that it is highly unlikely the agency will finish the new rules by the end of the year, as it originally proposed. The final regulation could be quite different from the original proposal, said Hart, vowing that valid complaints would be addressed.

“We’d rather do it right than do it quickly,” he said.

But Hart has pleaded with House members not to abandon the regulatory effort. “Lives will be lost while we wait,” he said. The new rule would save 115 lives and prevent nearly 3,000 serious injuries a year, according to the government.

The trucking agency has conducted hearings across the country--including Los Angeles--to solicit feedback. A final public comment session is scheduled in Washington this week.

While regulators may yet exempt bus lines and utilities and ease some of the proposed restrictions on long-haul truckers, safety advocates said the requirement for on-board recorders should be preserved.

Although recorders would cost an estimated $2,000 each, they promise to end widespread cheating on paper logs now used to record driving hours. About 58% of drivers spend more hours behind the wheel than they report, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin. The National Transportation Safety Board is among the safety organizations recommending recorders.

“The most important component of these regulations would be the use of on-board monitoring devices,” said Kristen Monaco, a transportation economist at Wisconsin. “There is no reason that in our technological age drivers should still have paper logs.”

But truckers regard recorders as little better than the electronic bracelets worn by criminals in home incarceration.

“Truckers like their freedom out there--they don’t want to feel like they’re always under somebody’s thumb,” said John Koonce of Camarillo, Calif., a supervisor at a major trucking company who still drives long distances for his father’s small company on weekends. “Why are they picking on the truckers?”

An Activist Congressman

The differences seem irreconcilable, but observers said there is slim hope that a compromise can be brokered so that Congress will refrain from stopping the regulators in their tracks. Much of that hope rests with a senior Republican congressman from Virginia, who became an activist after several serious truck accidents in his suburban Washington district. Rep. Frank R. Wolf also happens to be chairman of the House-Senate conference committee that must resolve the issue.

Wolf is saying very little about his strategy, but last week he sent his colleagues a letter. “Although the proposal as currently drafted has problems, it moves in the right direction,” he wrote.

And he recounted the story of a trucker who drove from the West Coast to Virginia in 48 hours. When police stopped the truck, they found several bottles of urine in the cab--indicating that the driver was not stopping even to relieve himself.

That situation is typical of what happens under current rules, Wolf said. “Obviously,” he wrote his colleagues, “this is not the sort of truck you or I want to be near when we are driving.”