Poll finds public opposes HOS rollback

Eighty percent of Americans surveyed opposed legislative efforts to increase the number of hours truck drivers can stay behind the wheel each week.    Eighty percent of Americans polled opposed legislative efforts to increase the number of hours truck drivers can stay behind the wheel each week, according to a recent survey by Lake Research. 25 percent of those polled think increasing work hours is a good idea.
   The poll is supported by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Truck Safety Coalition, the group Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety, Parents Against Tired Truckers and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Congressman James McGovern, D-Mass., also support the poll.
   Susan Collins, R-Me., is behind legislation that would suspend the rule that drivers can’t operate trucks between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. for two consecutive nights. She also wants to delay the requirement that limits the 34-hour restart to just once a week. In June, she said the bill was introduced “to remedy some of the unintended consequences that have occurred since changes were made last summer to the hours-of-service regulations.”
   Jackie Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety, said there’s “a clear disconnect between what the public wants and what special trucking interests want.” This, she said, is hampering public safety.
   “We urge Congress to reject this anti-safety change and heed the public’s correct assessment of the dangers,” she said.
   In a statement, TSC’s Executive Director John Lannen said, “Truck driver fatigue has been identified as a major safety problem and leading factor of fatal truck crashes by the National Transportation Safety Board. Increasing truck driver work hours would be a deadly setback for safety.”
   Bill Graves, chief executive officer of the American Trucking Associations, called the poll “misleading” and said it shouldn’t be considered when creating legislation. He instead pointed to a Public Opinion Strategies poll that gathered public opinion on truck driver operating hours.
   “This legitimate poll, in addition to finding that most Americans rightly believe that professional truck drivers are the safest drivers on the road — a point even conceded by our critics — found that Americans would prefer trucks operate at the time of day now restricted by FMCSA’s recent rule changes by a 67-24 margin,” he said.
   The Lake Research Partners poll also found that “eighty percent of Americans say they would feel less safe if legislation were passed to raise the number of hours a semi-truck driver is allowed to work in a week from 70 to 82 hours.”