The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released a study concluding that less than a quarter of over-the-road truck drivers drive more than 10 hours in a shift.
The current rules allow for 11 hours of driving before 10 hours of consecutive rest is required. The rules in effect before Jan. 4, 2004, allowed only 10 hours of driving.
FMCSA’s study also found that drivers rarely worked more than 13 hours in an on-duty cycle, and those who used split sleeper berth provisions typically had one period of six hours or greater.
The agency collected data from the logbooks of 542 drivers at 269 carriers during compliance reviews in January and February. FMCSA excluded drivers that were found to have falsified their records.
The review included 6,850 driving, 7,262 on-duty and 2,928 sleeper berth periods. Key findings include:
More than 70 percent of the drivers in the review of data used the 34-hour restart provision of the rule. For these drivers, a total of 1,411 recovery periods were recorded – the bulk of those recovery periods exceeded 44 hours, while only 15 percent recorded recovery times of less than 36 hours.
When FMCSA revamped the 70-year-old hours of service rule, it extended the number of hours a driver could drive in a single duty cycle from 10 to 11, retained sleeper berth exemptions and added the 34-hour restart provision – all of which have been criticized by safety advocates.
