Washington — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration desires to study the safety impact of the time that truck drivers spend ready for cargo to be loaded and unloaded.
That lag, typically in extra of two hours, is named “detention time.” In an Information Collection Request printed Aug. 24, FMCSA states that “drivers who experience less detention time may be more likely to drive safely to reach their destinations within the [federal hours-of-service] limits and less likely to operate beyond HOS limits and improperly log their driving and duty time to make deliveries on time.”
The company intends to gather knowledge on driver detention time from about 80 motor carriers and a pair of,500 drivers – “representative of the major segments” of the trucking trade. FMCSA will then analyze that knowledge to decide the frequency and severity of detention time and assess the “utility of existing intelligent transportation systems solutions” to measure detention time. A 2014 FMCSA study of detention time had “several limitations,” the discover states, together with:
- A small pattern of principally massive carriers
- A rudimentary estimation of detention time
- An incapacity to establish time spent loading/unloading
- Data that didn’t cowl a complete 12-month interval
“FMCSA needs additional data from a broader sample of carriers to understand the safety and operational impact of detention time, to better understand why detention time occurs, and to identify potential mitigation strategies the commercial motor vehicle industry may use to reduce detention time while improving operational efficiencies and safety,” the discover states.
Comments are due Oct. 23.
