FMCSA misapplied own crash data to rationalize new HOS rule, ATA says

Under the current HOS rule, the trucking industry has achieved a continually improving safety record, says ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. (The Trucker file photo)

The Trucker News Services

1/12/2011

ARLINGTON, Va. —  In an effort to rationalize a change in federal Hours of Service (HOS) requirements for professional truck drivers, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration misapplied its own crash numbers so as to elevate driver fatigue as a cause of truck crashes, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) said Wednesday.

In what is apparently the first of several releases that will call into question certain aspects of the FMCSA’s justification for the proposed rule, the ATA said “without this [fatigue-related crash data] and several other ill-considered revised assumptions, the proposed rule would fail the statutorily required cost/benefit analysis.

“Since the current HOS rules were introduced in 2003, the trucking industry has achieved a continually improving safety record, reaching the lowest fatality and injury rate levels in recorded history,” ATA President Bill Graves said. “It is troubling that this complex, restrictive set of proposed rules is founded on what appears to be incorrect analysis and inflated math.”

• It overstated the percentage of single-vehicle truck crashes (which are more likely to be fatigue-related) compared to multi-vehicle crashes. More specifically, FMCSA approximately doubled the weight given to single-vehicle truck crashes in its large truck crash causation study.

• FMCSA appears to be treating any crash in which fatigue is listed as an “associated factor” as a fatigue-caused crash. That approach is not just contrary to prior research methods, it is also at odds with the agency’s own report to Congress in March 2006 in which it stated that for associated factors: “No judgment is made as to whether any factor is related to the particular crash, just whether it was present.”

 Using these data manipulations, FMCSA has nearly doubled in its analysis of the number of truck-involved crashes that are likely caused by fatigue, the ATA said.

“Consistently in past rulemakings, the agency has found fatigue to be a causal factor in just 7 percent of crashes,” the ATA said in a news release. “In fact, in just 2008, the FMCSA noted that while the best data on fatigue as a factor in fatal truck accidents showed only a 2.2 percent relationship, it remained confident that its “7 percent figure is accurate.” Now, apparently to assist it in reaching a desired result the Agency has ignored the real world data and its past pronouncements and adopted a 13 percent fatigue factor. 

In addition to manipulating the fatigue factor (which inflates benefit estimations), the FMCSA has engaged in “creative” accounting in other areas of the new proposed HOS rules to try and justify its position, the ATA said.

The association said it was planning other releases to explain how the agency has used very questionable approaches to lower the projected costs to the industry of its changes by more than $1 billion annually (a 50 percent reduction) and increased supposed benefits of the rule changes by measuring assumed health benefits that it has long held are immeasurable and likely insignificant.

The Trucker staff can be reached to comment on this article at editor@thetrucker.com.