FMCSA Issues Notice and Request for Comments to Study Impact of HOS Regs on Crash Risk

The preamble of FMCSA's 2011 final HOS rule (76 FR 81134) stated that

FMCSA is committed to an analysis of the relative crash risk by driving hour, the impact of the changes in the HOS provisions, and examination of differences in crash risk after restarts that include 2 nights and those that do not. The HOS final rule also said that FMCSA would work with the OMB on the methodologies of these new statistical data collections.

FMCSA needs additional data to answer important questions related to driver schedules and how these factors impact overall driver performance and fatigue. This research requires data to be collected for HOS duty logs, accident and incident data, and inspection violations records. HOS duty logs, as well as incident and crash data, will be obtained through an integration with the telematics system provider, and driver demographic data will be provided directly by participating carriers. FMCSA will provide access to the Motor Carrier Management Information System database, which provides records of all DOT recordable crashes and inspection violation records. All data will be collected electronically. The information collected will be used to examine the relative risk of crashes and inspection violations based on various factors related to the driver's work schedule and demographics.

More information can be found here: Federal Register :: Agency Information Collection Activities; New Information Collection: Crash Risks by Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Driver Schedules

More information on NECS's HOS Management Service can be found here: HOS Service Management | NECS