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01/19/07 Hours of Service Survey – A Cause for Concern?
A recent online survey about the hours of service compliance rates of CDL truck drivers showed some disturbing if not surprising results. More than three-quarters of the drivers who participated in the survey admitted to deliberately violating the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) hours of service regulations. In addition, 55% said they would continue to violate those regulations in the future.
The survey was conducted by the non-profit, trucking educational group Ol’ Blue, USA. Using the Ol’ Blue website (www.OlBlueUSA.org) the group conducted the confidential survey of 1,094 qualified respondents from August 15, 2006 through October 31, 2006. Of those respondents 65% were company drivers, 26% leased owner-operators, 8% were owner-operators operating under their own authority, and 1% were involved in other occupations that required a CDL. The results were tabulated and analyzed by the transportation marketing and research firm of Crump and Associates.
In total some 1,175 drivers responded to the survey. After excluding those drivers that were retired, unemployed, non-CDL, or underage, the remaining 1,094 respondents were “qualified” by Crump and Associates, and their answers tabulated.
The qualified respondents broke down into the following types of route drivers. 7.6% drove local routes within 100 miles of their base. 31.8% were regional drivers operating within 500 miles of their base. 63.3% drove long haul, over 500 miles from their primary base of operations. And 2.9% drove what were described as “other” route types. (Note – the percentage exceeds 100 due to some drivers driving multiple route types.)
The survey also found that drivers said the most common deliberate violations of the hours of service regulations were:
- Logging time as being off-duty when actually on duty – 78.1%
- Using more than one log book at a time – 21.5%
- Logging violations properly and hoping they won’t be noticed –17.3%
- Indicating a team driver is driving when they are not – 11.3%
Drivers were also asked how often in a given month they thought they were intentionally operating in violation of the hours of service rules. The average answer was 6 days a month. When the same drivers were asked how many days a month they might unintentionally be operating outside of the regulations, the average answer was 5 days.
One especially disturbing statistic to emerge from the survey is that 10.8% of the surveyed drivers agree with the statement, “I do not care about obeying hours-of-service regulations,” with another 13.3% neither agreeing nor disagreeing with that statement.
Among the most interesting portions of the survey were the driver’s perceptions and attitudes towards the hours of service regulations, employers, and enforcement authorities. For example, 27.9% of drivers either somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement that, “It is necessary to violate hours-of-service regulations in order to earn a reasonable income,” while 60.4% disagreed with that statement. However those results were reversed when drivers were asked to agree or disagree with the statement; “People I work for expect me to violate hours of service regulations as part of my job.” 35.1% of drivers disagreed with that statement, while 51.1% agreed with it.
An overwhelming majority of drivers agreed with the statement; “Law enforcement officers do not understand how to relate to Commercial Motor Vehicle drivers,” 68.9% agreed compared to only 15.4% who disagreed.
Driver’s understanding of the hours of service regulations and their ability to get satisfactory explanations were also assessed by the survey:
- 26.5% of drivers felt that their employers would not give honest or direct answers to their hours of service questions. 52.4% disagreed and thought their employers were helpful with such questions However only,
- 44.2% of drivers said they thought they understood the regulations with no difficulty. But almost 55% said that while they thought they understood the regulations they still had difficulty with them.
- 48.7% thought they needed more plain-language training in the regulations while 34.6% said they didn’t.
- An overwhelming 67.5% of drivers agreed that the hours of service regulations were difficult to understand and easy to violate accidentally.
Though some of the specific finding’s of the survey were disturbing, most were not unexpected. That drivers for the most part either don’t like or don’t understand the hours of service regulations is no surprise to anyone in the industry. However the creators of the survey thought that a focus on specific problem areas that drivers industry-wide agreed on, could serve a valuable purpose. From the Ol’Blue website:
“The Ol’Blue, USA survey was not conducted to make truckers look bad, but instead to pinpoint the problems and verify the fact that many drivers are confused and frustrated with the current FMCSA’s HOS regulations. The vast majority of drivers out there want to run legal, but to do this, they need rules and regulations that are written in simple terms and easy to understand.” | 
