Changes Limiting Truckers’ Drive Hours Would Be Step Forward in Safety

Tomball Truck Accident Lawyer Explains How Proposed New Regulations that Further Limit the Hours Truckers Can Drive at a Stretch Would Enhance Highway Safety

Our Tomball truck accident lawyers have been following an ongoing controversy concerning the number of hours that truck drivers should be allowed to drive at a stretch. Political and powerbroker discussions are underway trying to overturn the FMCSA’s proposed new hours of service limits for truck drivers. The proposed new service limit rules would:

• Reduce the amount of time a truck driver could drive within a 24-hour period from 11 hours to 10 hours.
• Limit truck drivers to a single 34-hour restart within a 7-day period.
• Require two rest periods between midnight and 6 a.m. for all 34-hour restarts.
• Require truck drivers to take a 30-minute break after driving for 7 hours.
• Require truck drivers to take a total of 1 hour of breaks within any 14-16 hour driving window.

Even these proposed new limits on truck driving hours still let truck drivers work for long periods without much in the way of breaks. Your Tomball truck accident lawyer asks you: do you often work 14 to 16 hours at a stretch with only a single hour of breaks? Would it make you tired if you worked for such a long stretch?

Well, it makes truck drivers tired too. And sometimes they fall asleep at the wheel or lose their focus and cause massive truck wrecks. Around 1500 people die each year from wrecks caused by driver fatigue. Another 100,000 receive injuries. Some of these injuries are catastrophic, disabling ones that require expensive, lifelong medical care. These driver-fatigue related truck wrecks cause billions of dollars in damages and ongoing expenses.

• Critics of the proposed rule changes say that the regulatory burden will cost $1 billion. (That’s still small change compared to the billions the rules might save by preventing fatigue-related truck wreck injuries and fatalities.)
• Critics say that trucking companies will have to hire more drivers to meet tight delivery deadlines. (The savings they might reap from fewer high dollar fatigue-related truck wreck claims dwarf their increased payroll costs will probably still. A single truck wreck-related claim could easily top $1,000,000.)
• Critics claim the extra number of truck drivers will lead to increased road congestion and traffic delays. (I didn’t notice anything saying that the trucking companies were also adding additional trucks to their fleets. Without increased numbers of trucks, the amount of truck traffic would remain the same. And you might have noticed that what really ties up traffic are the lengthy delays caused by thorough accident scene clean-ups and investigations following major road crashes.)

Still, politicians are putting their weight behind efforts to block the proposed rule changes. This might be because politicians typically receive far more in campaign contributions and other considerations from corporate interests like trucking companies than they do from the financially distressed victims of catastrophic truck wrecks.

The Tomball truck accident lawyers at Denena & Points point out that the collected data regarding the relationship between truck driver fatigue and catastrophic truck wrecks remains clear. Anything that the FMCSA and other regulatory authorities can do to prevent driver fatigue should lead to increases in safety for other divers that share the roads with trucks. Don’t let politicians and powerbrokers put their profits over your safety.

While our Tomball truck accident lawyers are perfectly capable of helping you recover financial compensation for your injuries and losses after a catastrophic truck wreck, obviously you’re far better off if you never experience that truck wreck and the injuries and fatalities it could cause.