ATA responds to Public Citizen filing
Saturday, September 29th, 20079/28/2007 ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The American Trucking Associations said Friday it has issued a response to a filing by Public Citizen on the Hours of Service rules. And, the lobbying group defended its request several weeks ago for an eight-month stay on an appeals court’s ruling vacating two portions of HOS.
ATA had sought “a stay of decision for eight months to allow those [two vacated] provisions [of HOS] to stay in place pending further agency action.”
After ATA requested the eight-month stay, Public Citizen countered with a response of its own, and ATA’s filing Friday was a “response to their response,“ ATA Vice President of Public Affairs, Clayton Boyce, told The Trucker.
ATA Friday said its response to Public Citizen “completes the briefing process, making a decision on the motion ripe at any time. The court is under no time limit to decide, but a decision is expected in the next few weeks.”
In a separate filing this week, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) submitted an amicus memorandum supporting ATA’s earlier motion for a stay. In the filing, CTA pointed out that Canadian drivers are allowed 13 hours of daily driving time and a 36-hour restart, “provisions that have not proven to be a safety concern.” CTA also explained the value of the 34-hour restart to Canadian drivers who may have to wait extended periods for their next international load.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had strongly supported ATA’s motion, citing the same grounds relied on by ATA, “but asked that the stay be 12 months instead of eight,” ATA noted.
In response to a challenge from Public Citizen, joined by three other safety groups and the Teamsters Union, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit this summer vacated two HOS provisions: one allowing 11 hours of driving time per day, and one allowing drivers to restart their weekly clock after 34 hours of rest.
The ATA response took Public Citizen to task, saying that it is a group which “claims to promote highway safety” but “continues to disregard the important safety advantages of the commercial drivers’ HOS regulations that it has attacked in the courts.”
ATA said Public Citizen failed to recognize that “current HOS regulations significantly increased the mandated daily rest period for drivers from 8 to 10 hours and required drivers to complete their daily driving within 14 hours of the beginning of their shifts instead of an extendable 15 hours in the previous regulations.” ATA added that those two changes keep drivers from suffering cumulative fatigue and “make safer the driver’s daily driving tour, including in the 11th hour.”
ATA said, “Public Citizen first claimed that the court had substantively struck down the two challenged provisions and that the court would unquestionably do so again in future litigation.”
ATA said in its reply filed Friday that it “countered that the court did not rule that those provisions are unsafe, only that FMCSA erred in its rulemaking procedures.”
“This assertion was supported by express statements made in the court’s opinion,” ATA continued, adding that “FMCSA agreed as well, noting in its [own] filing that the decision did not foreclose issuance of a new rule that contains the 11- and 34-hour provisions, assuming the agency provides the requisite notice and comment and adequately explains its reasoning.”
Among ATA’s other responses to Public Citizen’s filing are that it “failed to address an expert statistician’s declaration that validates the FMCSA interpretation of the key fatigue study at issue in the litigation”; that it “failed to respond to evidence that in the real world of truck operations, the 34-hour restart does not significantly increase weekly driving hours”; that it “failed to respond to the reports of positive effects that the 11- and 34-hour provisions have had on drivers and their health. Under these provisions drivers have more time at home with families, greater scheduling flexibility and opportunities for greater income”; that “it offered no proof, only patently wrong assertions, that the dislocation and costs to the industry of a rule change would not be as great as ATA suggests”; and that “it wrongly stated that productivity benefits of the HOS rule result only from increased driving hours, ignoring the benefits from increased flexibility and enhanced efficiency in equipment usage.”
ATA said its motion for a stay is also supported by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance law enforcement group, UPS and three shipper groups: the National Industrial Transportation League, the National Small Shipment Traffic Conference and the Health & Personal Care Logistics Conference Inc., the ATA release stated.
The CTA filing and ATA’s final brief will be available on the ATA Web site at: www.truckline.com.
