New truck-driving rules get mixed reviews

Federal driving rules that took effect Sunday allow truckers to sleep more, but may keep them on the road more as well, according to Mainers who give the new regulations mixed reviews.

The new rules require professional truck drivers to take at least 10 hours off in between drives. The old rule required just eight hours of down time.

But the rules also allow truckers to stay on the road for as long as 11 straight hours. That’s an hour more than before.

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates the change will reduce deaths associated with truck-driver fatigue from 440 to 335 a year.

A Maine trucking lobbying group said the rules represent a first step to improve safety.

“I do think they’ve made an honest effort,” said Dale Hanington, president of Maine Motor Transport Association, which represents 1,215 commercial trucking companies in the state.

But some commercial truck drivers said the rules offered little in the way of safety, while likely making it more difficult for short-haul drivers.

The new rules don’t address reducing the risks of separating tire rubber or losing brake power or anything else mechanical, or erratic motorists who can cause problems for the much bigger tractor-trailers, said Phil Chase, a Stetson truck driver for more than 30 years. And requiring truck drivers to rest 10 hours, two more hours than before, can create uneven sleeping patterns, which Chase said is more of a problem for experienced drivers than length of time on the road.

“People who write the laws don’t drive a truck,” said Chase while at Dysart’s Truck Stop and Restaurant in Hermon on Saturday.

Mike Hardy of Houlton is a long-haul operator who has been driving a truck off and on for most of his life. During a stop at Dysart’s over the weekend, he said he doesn’t think the changes will affect his runs from Houlton to Colorado, Florida and back to Maine.

But Hardy does think the longer rest times between on- duty periods may hamper shorter runs – from northern Maine to Connecticut, for example – where the drivers have to get to their destination, unload, reload and drive back.

Both Hardy and Chase said that ultimately it will take time to see how things shake out under the new rules.

One potential benefit, Chase said, is that the waiting period after working 60 to 70 hours during a seven- or eight-day period has been reduced from four days to 34 hours, allowing him to get back on the road sooner, he said.

Daphne Izer of Lisbon, co-chairwoman of Parents Against Tired Truckers, said the new rules don’t help at all.

Izer and her husband, Stephen, founded the safety group 10 years ago after their son Jeff and three other teenagers were killed when a truck slammed into their car in the breakdown lane of the turnpike in Falmouth in 1993.

The trucker, who said he did not doze at the wheel, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of falsifying his logbook.

PATT now has an office in Washington, D.C. It is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit by the consumer group Public Citizen versus the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Public Citizen sued this year to overturn the new regulations before they were put in effect. The case is pending in federal court.

The new rules “abandon virtually every principle that FMCSA has proclaimed necessary for new hours-of-service rules,” Daphne Izer said.

Critics said the biggest problem with the regulations is that they don’t require electronic on-board recorders – black boxes for trucks – that would automatically monitor the truck’s movement.