.the guys sitting in power right now had very little to do with the Hours of Service rules going into affect. The process started under Clinton, was mandated by Congress, and it just took the FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) this long to finish it. (Typical government, slow as molasses in January.)
Bush can't claim any credit for this situation; it was already in the works when he first stole office. And it actually (in most cases) benefits drivers over the companies. Most companies had to give raises to their drivers to offset the pay cut they got when the new HOS shortened their workday. These days, drivers get more time off, they sleep better, and their paychecks haven't suffered. The bills Bush signed were pushed by Congress to reduce the uncertainty caused in the entire trucking industry by these vindictive lawsuits. Keep in mind that 80% of the goods that are bought and sold in this country (everything from the paper your newspaper is printed on, to the food you eat, the goods in your home, the material that built your home, all of it) was probably delivered on a truck. My town doesn't even have a train station any longer! Shipping costs are one of those cost-of-goods things most consumers never see except when they're buying a new car. But remember that when shipping costs go up, those costs are passed along to the consumer in the form of increased prices. Bush is in enough trouble over the economy as it is, he isn't going to veto a bill when doing so threatens to damage the economy even more.
Did you know that drivers are classified as non-skilled labor by our Government, and they are exempted from wage/labor laws most of you take for granted? Drivers these days get paid only for the miles they drive, not the hours it takes to drive them, nor for all the rest of the work they do every day (waiting for loading/unloading, waiting for load assignments, fueling, inspecting, cleaning, and repairing equipment, doing paperwork, etc.) (Teamsters are a special case, since they're union, but they are vastly outnumbered by the non-union companies today.) This is like a secretary being paid a piece-rate based on the words typed per day, but also requiring phone answering, note taking, and all the other duties secretaries usually do go unpaid. Simply re-classifying drivers as skilled labor and putting them back under wage protection laws (minimum wage, 8 hr work days, etc) would go a long way toward solving what little fatigue issues there are. Strangely, no one on the "highway safety" soapbox as so much as hinted as such a thing because it would raise the costs of everything they themselves buy.
Truck drivers are subject to "Hours of Service" which control when and how long a driver can drive. They finally changed in 2004, after having been instituted back in the 1930's and left unchanged for decades. PATT and CRASH (who, I might point out, get a large chunk of their funding from the Railroad industry) are against anything positive which can actually help. They simply want to put the trucking industry out of business and they twist any information they can in their attempts to accomplish this goal. If PATT and CRASH are so concerned about highway safety, why aren't they targeting their efforts where it could do the most good? Improved driver education for all licensed drivers would be a big step in the right direction.
http://bulktransporter.com/news/CRASH/index.html">CRASH preparing attack on trucking (Current issue)
The rules change did not benefit the trucking companies much, since it reduced the time available to their employee-drivers to drive. Not only did company costs go up, but the drivers themselves got a significant cut in their paychecks. It did, however, finally give the drivers enough clout to enable them to avoid the abusive practices many company dispatcher/managers used to employ. Previously, if a driver's logbook (where HOS rules were tracked) showed available driving hours, that driver was ordered to drive, no matter how tired he or she was at the time. With the new rules, the driver is required to stop driving no later than 14 hours after he started, and often earlier, since there is an 11 hour limit on actual driving.
Big trucks driven by professional drivers are involved in less than 5% of the accidents on our highways. From 75% to 80% (of that less-than-5%) are found to be the fault of the amateur drivers in the passenger vehicles involved. (This information comes from a study done by Triple A. They haven't been very vocal about it because it doesn't fit their anti-truck agenda.) The overall accident rates for all big trucks have gone down since the new rules went into effect.
Short-haul trucks weren't deregulated, as another poster claimed. One subset of short-haul drivers were relieved of the need to keep a paper log book. They are still subject to Hours of Service, but the onus is now on the company employing them to track their hours, rather than the individual driver.
The new rules even added a new group of drivers to HOS requirements which weren't previously covered. For example those guys driving those dualie pickup trucks to haul things like FEMA trailers, 3-vehicle transport trailers, and the like. These folks (who aren't required to have a CDL because their power units are too small) are now required to follow the HOS just like the big dogs they are competing with.
Here's a link to the official announcement regarding the Hours of Service:
HOS Final Rule 8-25-05Regarding the multi-vehicle accident, that's a sad affair. Information I've read online indicates the truck driver that died had a heart attack. The fact that his errant vehicle was able to collide head-on with oncoming traffic says more about our state's highway design than anything else. Had this occurred in Chicago, for instance, there would have been a large concrete center divider to block his path. Missouri has been installing cable fencing up the center of all of their interstates. I think Illinois should consider such a barrier as well, but the majority of the highway funds always seem to go to Chicago, don't they?
Now, that driver in Florida who apparently had gone something like 30+ hours without sleep? You can be sure he'll be jailed for a very long time, because CDL holders are held to a much stricter standard than amateur drivers are. And he'll deserve it, too. I have no sympathy for him!
A little about myself: I'm a laid-off software engineer. Thanks to the current tax incentives that have shoved so many software/IT jobs overseas to India and the like, I was unable to find a similar job in my area. So, I packed my stuff into a storage locker, vacated my rental house, and used my unemployment benefits to go to professional driving school and get a CDL (Commercial Drivers License.) I'm now one of those evil over-the-road truckers you folks seem to hate so much. And yes, I'm subject to random drug and alcohol tests, and I have to take physicals to prove I'm physically fit to drive. (Do you?) Sigh. (I work shorter hours than I did as a software engineer, too!) My pay is about 60% of what it was before, but I'm saving more because my expenses are lower and I'm rarely home to spend it.
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