Hours of service: Fatal flaws, a slow response to potential fixes
By Todd Dills and James Jaillet
As many truckers are quick to point out, the hours of service rule’s one–size–fits–all prescription isn’t suited for drivers’ highly variable and unpredictable schedules. Furthermore, because the rule is unable to address the quality or quantity of sleep during off-duty periods, there is no guarantee baked into the regulation that a driver legal on hours is alert enough to drive safely.
The fixed 14–hour on–duty clock virtually forces truckers to continue to operate when they feel tired and otherwise would opt for a long break.
“The government really screwed up when they took away the ability to take a nap and not lose that time” in the duty day, says small–fleet owner Harold Hoffman, echoing common driver sentiment.
Given the predominance of per–mile pay, drivers are pressured to pack as many on–duty hours into that 14–hour window as possible, leaving little room for rest when it’s needed. The rule offers drivers little to no flexibility in managing rest during their off-duty periods.
Don Osterberg, a former member of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, notes that the rule also often pushes a driver away from an anchor sleep period and into a drifting sleep pattern. “The anchor sleep period provides the most restorative value to mitigate both short– and long–term fatigue,” he says.
A driver might sleep from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. one week but switch the next week to nighttime driving and daytime sleep. “Our bodies can’t adapt to those wide swings in work–rest patterns,” he says.
FMCSA has historically placed most of its fatigue management efforts elsewhere than evaluating fatigue-monitoring technology, some of which has been available for decades, if not in trucking then in mining and construction.
However, FMCSA does have two such monitoring projects in the works, says spokesperson Duane DeBruyne. Systems under research include actigraphy, where a wrist-worn device tracks body movement to measure quality and quantity of sleep, and head-worn devices designed to detect fatigue and distraction by measuring head movements.
The research for both is being conducted by the federal Small Business Innovative Research program, studying what DeBruyne called a trucking fatigue meter and a multi–modal driver distraction and fatigue detection warning system. DeBruyne says the research into those systems will be completed by the end of next year.
DeBruyne describes the fatigue meter as “using existing streams of trucking data to evaluate driver fatigue and provide actionable feedback in near–real time,” a phrase that could describe any of today’s fatigue monitors marketed to the trucking industry.
Results from FMCSA’s Flexible Split Sleeper Pilot Program study could hold the most short–term promise when it comes to giving drivers more ways to effectively deal with fatigue. An agency spokesperson says the study is waiting for a go–ahead from the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Its goal is to see if there are safety improvements when drivers have more options to split the required daily 10–hour off–duty period in increments other than the currently allowed 8 and 2 hours (5 and 5, 6 and 4, etc.).
Many observers cite the slow, cumbersome federal regulatory machine as making it unlikely in the foreseeable future that the hours rule would ever get such a radical revision as to include fatigue–monitoring technology. Others see a less distant path to such a change.
Load One’s John Elliott considers the ELD mandate as a step along the path to changing the rule. With the mandate in effect, “we’ll be able to go back to Congress and push for logical hours reform based on the data,” Elliott says. “FMCSA’s shield has always been ‘We don’t have all the data.’ Like [Compliance, Safety, Accountability], too much [about hours] is based on policy, not on science. With all that data, we can break it down on science for the driver that has just been ignored.”
Small–fleet owner James Griffith also believes FMCSA officials could make better decisions on HOS if they get the accurate data produced by fatigue monitors. It could even lead to a major change in how drivers’ on–duty time is handled, he says.
Griffith’s 35–40–truck fleet, Conard Transportation, based outside of Nashville, Tennessee, uses road–facing dashcams and Maven Machines earpieces that measure head movement to detect potential fatigue and distraction. He says he’s been pleased with the improved safety results.
http://www.overdriveonline.com/
As many truckers are quick to point out, the hours of service rule’s one–size–fits–all prescription isn’t suited for drivers’ highly variable and unpredictable schedules. Furthermore, because the rule is unable to address the quality or quantity of sleep during off-duty periods, there is no guarantee baked into the regulation that a driver legal on hours is alert enough to drive safely.
The fixed 14–hour on–duty clock virtually forces truckers to continue to operate when they feel tired and otherwise would opt for a long break.
“The government really screwed up when they took away the ability to take a nap and not lose that time” in the duty day, says small–fleet owner Harold Hoffman, echoing common driver sentiment.
Given the predominance of per–mile pay, drivers are pressured to pack as many on–duty hours into that 14–hour window as possible, leaving little room for rest when it’s needed. The rule offers drivers little to no flexibility in managing rest during their off-duty periods.
Don Osterberg, a former member of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, notes that the rule also often pushes a driver away from an anchor sleep period and into a drifting sleep pattern. “The anchor sleep period provides the most restorative value to mitigate both short– and long–term fatigue,” he says.
A driver might sleep from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. one week but switch the next week to nighttime driving and daytime sleep. “Our bodies can’t adapt to those wide swings in work–rest patterns,” he says.
FMCSA has historically placed most of its fatigue management efforts elsewhere than evaluating fatigue-monitoring technology, some of which has been available for decades, if not in trucking then in mining and construction.
However, FMCSA does have two such monitoring projects in the works, says spokesperson Duane DeBruyne. Systems under research include actigraphy, where a wrist-worn device tracks body movement to measure quality and quantity of sleep, and head-worn devices designed to detect fatigue and distraction by measuring head movements.
The research for both is being conducted by the federal Small Business Innovative Research program, studying what DeBruyne called a trucking fatigue meter and a multi–modal driver distraction and fatigue detection warning system. DeBruyne says the research into those systems will be completed by the end of next year.
DeBruyne describes the fatigue meter as “using existing streams of trucking data to evaluate driver fatigue and provide actionable feedback in near–real time,” a phrase that could describe any of today’s fatigue monitors marketed to the trucking industry.
Results from FMCSA’s Flexible Split Sleeper Pilot Program study could hold the most short–term promise when it comes to giving drivers more ways to effectively deal with fatigue. An agency spokesperson says the study is waiting for a go–ahead from the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Its goal is to see if there are safety improvements when drivers have more options to split the required daily 10–hour off–duty period in increments other than the currently allowed 8 and 2 hours (5 and 5, 6 and 4, etc.).
Many observers cite the slow, cumbersome federal regulatory machine as making it unlikely in the foreseeable future that the hours rule would ever get such a radical revision as to include fatigue–monitoring technology. Others see a less distant path to such a change.
Load One’s John Elliott considers the ELD mandate as a step along the path to changing the rule. With the mandate in effect, “we’ll be able to go back to Congress and push for logical hours reform based on the data,” Elliott says. “FMCSA’s shield has always been ‘We don’t have all the data.’ Like [Compliance, Safety, Accountability], too much [about hours] is based on policy, not on science. With all that data, we can break it down on science for the driver that has just been ignored.”
Small–fleet owner James Griffith also believes FMCSA officials could make better decisions on HOS if they get the accurate data produced by fatigue monitors. It could even lead to a major change in how drivers’ on–duty time is handled, he says.
Griffith’s 35–40–truck fleet, Conard Transportation, based outside of Nashville, Tennessee, uses road–facing dashcams and Maven Machines earpieces that measure head movement to detect potential fatigue and distraction. He says he’s been pleased with the improved safety results.
http://www.overdriveonline.com/
posted by Chuck Demastus at
7:59 PM
