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Thursday, December 07, 2006

NY Times Chronicles Bush Administration's Lax Trucking Regulations

On Sunday, The New York Times kicked off a series exposing the Bush administration's efforts at unabashedly pro-industry and often dangerous deregulation. The first in the series focuses on the trucking industry. The article states, "The federal government's oversight of the trucking industry is a case study of deregulation, as well as the difficulty of determining an exact calculus of its consequences."

Despite opposition from public interest groups and even the insurance industry, trucking interests have rewritten rules at the expense of motorists and truck drivers alike.

The 2003 and 2004 rewrite includes some puzzling provisions:

• An increase in the maximum driving hours over the course of a week, from 60 to 77 (though also a cap on daily work hours of 14)
• A requirement of ten hours of training for new drivers, none of it on the road
• A rejection of a recommendation to require electronic monitoring devices in rigs

The rejection of electronic monitoring devices is particularly objectionable because driver log books are something of a joke in the industry. The article discusses forged logbooks and truckers forced to drive themselves to exhaustion:

Timothy L. Unrine, a 41-year-old driver from Virginia, said in a recent interview that he was taught to conceal excessive driving hours during training last January by his former employer, Boyd Brothers Transportation of Birmingham, Ala. Mr. Unrine said his orientation instructor told his class that government inspectors were allowed to examine a monthly logbook if it was bound. But if the staples were removed, the log was considered "loose leaf" and inspectors could require an examination of only those pages from the most recent seven days, Mr. Unrine said the drivers were told. Several times, when he told a dispatcher he was too tired to make another trip, he said, he was ordered to do so after just a few hours' sleep.

In addition to abused truck drivers, deregulation endangers motorists. The article centers on a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman killed in 2004 by an admittedly tired truck driver. The woman's family is suing the driver and the trucking company, but also using the suit to address the larger issue of the Bush administration's disregard for public safety when it comes to regulation. Compassionate conservatism at work.