New Trucking Regulations
The Indiana Injury Law Blog has posted an article that discusses a new regulation that would require truckers to drive for less than eleven consecutive hours, the current time limit.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is working to produce an official plan to reduce the number of hours truckers can drive, but likely won't have results for around nine months. Previously, truckers were limited to ten hours of driving time per day, so it would seem likely the FMCSA would revert back to that.
At first it may not seem that a single hour can make a significant difference, but trucker fatigue accounts for a large number of traffic accidents.
Every year, thousands of truck accidents can be traced to tired, drowsy truckers, fatigued from too many hours spent on the job...Dealing with trucker fatigue is an important part of reducing accident fatality rates, and setting lower maximum working hours for truckers is an important part of those efforts.
An eleven hour day would certainly make sense from an economic standpoint, but the pressure truckers are under to make timed deliveries combined with fatigue can often lead to serious accidents.
Profits for the trucking industry must not be allowed to take precedence over the safety of motorists and truck drivers.