Administration moves to ease rules for truckers

Associated Press

OPAL, Va.

The Transportation Department is moving to relax the federal regulations that required truck drivers to pull over, a long-sought goal of the trucking industry and a move that would highlight its influence with the Trump administration. Interest groups that represent motor carriers and truck drivers have lobbied for revisions they say would make the rigid “hours of service” rules more flexible.

But highway safety advocates are warning the contemplated changes would dangerously weaken the regulations, resulting in truckers putting in even longer days at a time when they say driver fatigue is such a serious problem. They point to new government data that show fatal crashes involving trucks weighing as much as 80,000 pounds have increased.

“I think flexibility is a code word for deregulation,” said Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, an alliance of insurance companies and consumer, public health and safety groups. She said the hours of service requirements, which permit truckers to drive up to 11 hours each day, are already “exceedingly liberal in our estimation.”