WASHINGTON —The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) commencing research to develop a framework for assessing the impacts of trucking industry regulations.
The framework development will initially be focused on Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Hours-of-Service (HOS) and the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Mandate. Industry stakeholders, including motor carriers, truck drivers and law enforcement, are all encouraged to take the HOS / ELD survey.
ATRI’s Research Advisory Committee (RAC), recognizing the need to develop a framework for assessing the costs and benefits of regulations governing the trucking industry, identified this as a top priority in 2026.
Assessing Regulations
In the HOS / ELD survey, respondents will assess the overall HOS rules, the ELD mandate, and nine specific provisions of these two regulations. Respondents will be asked to assess the regulations according to their perceived safety benefit and cost of compliance. In addition, the survey will ask respondents for recommended changes to each of the provisions to improve their safety benefit and lower the cost of compliance, providing a roadmap for policy improvements.
As noted, this first phase and data collection is focused on the HOS and ELD regulations, but the emerging benefit-cost framework is intended to be applied to, and evaluate other trucking industry regulations across safety, workforce, and the environment.
Interested participants are asked to respond by Oct. 16. All responses will be kept entirely confidential, and data will only be presented in an aggregated, anonymized format. Click here to participate.
Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
