FMCSA report: 2020 hours of service changes inconclusive

Trucking news and briefs for Thursday, May 11, 2023:

During the pre-change period, an average of 7.6% of driver inspections had at least one HOS violation, FMCSA found. During the post-change period, an average of 8.5% of driver inspections had least one HOS violation. The drop in HOS enforcement in April of 2020 reflects the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on roadside enforcement activities, which rebounded shortly thereafter.The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said in a new report to Congress that since the 2020 changes to the hours-of-service regulations took effect, hours of service violations have seen a significant uptick, while crashes and fatalities have held mostly flat.

The agency noted, however, similarly to its report to Congress on the effectiveness of the electronic logging device mandate, that “initial trends may have been confounded by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on industry operations and FMCSA’s emergency declaration that provided HOS regulatory relief for commercial motor vehicle operations providing direct assistance in support of COVID-19 relief efforts.”

The report to Congress was required by a Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. It requested that FMCSA conduct an analysis by comparing “safety data, including but not limited to, the number of crashes, crash type, number of fatalities categorized by occupant type, number of serious injuries, the rate of involvement that large trucks have accidents, and the time of day and on what type of roadway the accident occurred.”

In the report, FMCSA analyzed inspection and crash data from Jan. 1, 2018, through Sept. 30, 2020 for the pre-change period, and Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021, for the post-change period.

The agency found that driver inspections with at least one hours-of-service violation increased from 7.6% before the HOS changes took effect to 8.5% after the changes, and that driver inspections with one or more out-of-service HOS violation increased from 2.6% to 3.2%. At the same time, the monthly large-truck crash rate per 100 million miles only increased from 5.58 to 5.7, and the monthly large-truck fatality rate per 100 million miles increased from 0.164 to 0.167.

Regarding crash trends, FMCSA said no conclusions can be drawn yet because the analysis could not distinguish between drivers using and not using the COVID-19 HOS waivers.