Hours of Service Rule Revisions Behind Schedule

Interstate trucking accidents keep happening, and as a trucking accident trial attorney in Atlanta, I keep seeing the tragic results. Many of those crashes are due at least in part to driver fatigue.

But in Washington the government is behind schedule for approval of revisions to truck drivers’ hours of service rules, according to a report from Heavy Duty Trucking magazine’s website.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration originally thought that the White House Office of Management and Budget would clear the proposal by the end of October. Now the FMCSA hopes that OMB and the White House will complete work on the proposal by the end of the year.

Trucking companies are anxious about the possibility that a rule change might significantly change drivers’ work schedules. As readers of this blog know, I think some change of schedules might be a good thing for safety.

There is also concern about FMCSA’s ability to process the voluminous comments it will no doubt receive and come up with a final rule by the court-ordered deadline of July 26, 2011.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is a board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group, a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers . He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, products liability, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.