Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015 - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, it appears I first need to say to my colleague and to those who are listening, there is no one in this body, in the trucking industry, among their customers who wants to see trucking accidents. All of us are committed to safer roads, and to make sure that freight is delivered in a safe manner in this country.

In fact, the former Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said in a letter to the committee dated June 17:

The fact is the Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill which contains a temporary suspension of two new provisions in the 34-hour restart rule makes the roads safer.

Makes the roads safer. That is what this debate is about.

I am very disappointed to see that the Senator from New Jersey is otherwise engaged and not listening to these comments.

Let me start with a fact. The fact is, under current law, under the Collins amendment, under the provisions we reported in the Appropriations Committee, it is illegal for any driver to operate a commercial motor vehicle when that driver's ability or alertness is impaired through fatigue, illness, or any other cause so as to make his or her driving unsafe.

That is illegal. That is illegal now. That will continue to be illegal if our provisions become law. I think that perhaps it would be helpful, given the disappointing amount of misinformation that has been circulated by the proponents of this amendment, if I were to go through some of the provisions of the hours-of-service regulation. Those are the regulations that are the foundation of the rules that govern truck safety in this country.

The fact is our Transportation-HUD appropriations bill would not suspend the entire hours-of-service regulation or the entire 34-hour restart provisions as some keep saying, both on the Senate floor and in the media. To be clear, our proposal would not change the maximum driving hours that are allowed per day. It would not change the total on-duty window in each shift. It would not change the minimum number of off-duty hours between shifts, which is 10 hours. It would not change the mandatory 30-minute rest break that is required by your eighth hour.

That is a new provision that was adopted last July.

My friend from New Jersey claims I am wiping out all of these rules. Regrettably, he is simply mistaken about that. I am not changing any of these provisions of the hours-of-service regulation, including one that was adopted last July requiring a mandatory 30-minute rest break prior to your eighth hour. I support that. I think that is a good idea. I support the provisions for a limit on how many hours a driver can be behind the wheel. I support the limit on the maximum on-duty hours. I support the requirement for 10 hours off between shifts. So to say I am repealing all of these truck safety regulations is simply false. It is a disservice to the debate on an important issue for wrong information to be circulated about what we are trying to do.

There is another important provision we are not changing that I think is going to help to improve truck safety, and that is the upcoming requirement for electronic, onboard recorders to replace the paper logs that are kept by some truckdrivers now.

The paper logs have been proven to be less accurate, and obviously there is a potential for reporting false information. With electronic logs, that goes away. I am a strong supporter of the rulemaking that is going to lead to the requirement for electronic logs, which many truckdrivers are already using. Our bill, in fact, includes some funding to help truckdrivers of smaller fleets afford the electronic logs.

What are we changing? We are changing only two provisions, and that is why our amendment--my amendment--was adopted by an overwhelmingly strong bipartisan group in the Appropriations Committee. The vote was 21 to 9 because the members of the committee took the time to understand what we were doing and what we were not doing.

Here is one of the problems. The new rules require that a truckdriver have two consecutive nights where he must be off duty and sleeping between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. There are a lot of people in this country who work a night shift, and if we talk to them they will tell you that what is disruptive to them is to work a day shift part of the week, a night shift part of the week, go back to the day shift, and go back and forth.

Many of our drivers want to drive during the overnight hours because the statistics overwhelmingly show that is the safest time for them to be on the roads.

This isn't a matter of conjecture. It is based on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's own analysis about what times of the day crashes occur. The fact is, the safest time for trucks to travel is between midnight and 6 a.m. The number of crashes nearly quadruples between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. It is five times higher between noon and 6 p.m.

Let's think about this for a moment. It just makes sense. There are far fewer vehicles on the road. Why in the world would we want to push truckdrivers to have to be on the road when children are going back and forth from school, when commuters are going to work.

One truckdriver from Maine gave me a great example. For those of us who are familiar with downtown Boston, with all of its small, curvy streets and all of its one-way streets, he said to me: If I have to wait until 5 a.m. to deliver fuel to a convenience store on the corner of two busy streets in downtown Boston and I am going to arrive there at 7 a.m.--during the rush hour, during the time when people are getting up, going to school and to work--it is far more dangerous. It is far more difficult for those commuters trying to stop at that convenience store while I am trying to deliver the fuel. It is far safer for me to be delivering that fuel at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. in the morning before the convenience store even opens and before the traffic picks up.

But, again, the Senator from New Jersey doesn't have to take my word for it. Please, I would implore the Senator from New Jersey to look at the statistics--and these are the newest statistics the Department has put out. They are very clear that the crashes more than quadruple--quadruple--during those daylight hours.

That is why the truckdrivers would prefer to be on the road at night when it is safer and to do their deliveries when their customers need the deliveries to be done--whether it is to that convenience store that needs gas before the rush hour starts or whether it is to a grocery store that needs to reload its shelves. That just makes sense.

The second change--and the only other change--that our amendment makes to the hours of service provisions has to do with the limitation on the use of the restart. Under the new regulations which were implemented last July about 1 year ago the Department limited the 34-hour restart to once a week. It is once every 168 hours.

How does that make sense? The Presiding Officer and I both come from States where there can be severe winter weather, and a truckdriver who is delivering in Wisconsin or Maine may run into a terrible storm.

Why shouldn't he or she be allowed to take a 34-hour period off while the storm is raging and then restart the clock on the number of hours that he or she can take?

By the way, the restart, under the current law, is voluntary, and we do not change the requirement--which is current law--that a truckdriver cannot drive more than 70 hours in 8 days. What we are saying, however, is we don't want that truckdriver to be out there in bad weather trying to push through and get home because he or she is running up against the clock and can't take a second 34-hour restart.

In fact, as the former administrator--who, by the way, has spent her professional life of 22 years in public safety--has written: We encourage drivers to get more rest, to not take the chance of driving through bad weather.

Now let me address the conflicting arguments I heard from the Senator from New Jersey on the issue of whether these regulations have been studied enough.

On the one hand, he says they have been studied to death and they are well based in scientific research. But the fact is that the current Administrator of FMCSA recently testified over on the House side and was specifically asked if the agency had evaluated the safety and congestion impacts of large trucks being forced by the new regulations to drive during the hours when crashes are most likely.

The Administrator confirmed: The field study did not address or talk about the impact of traffic on the road.

That is why it is critically important to study all aspects of the regulation. It appeared that FMCSA also failed to coordinate with its sister agency the Federal Highway Administration.

Just last month the Federal Highway Administration announced a grant program called the Off Hours Freight Delivery Program for cities that ``look at how truck deliveries made outside of peak and rush hours--when there is less traffic on the highways--can save time and money for freight carriers, improve air quality and create more sustainable and livable cities.''

So clearly the agencies within the Department of Transportation are not communicating their policies with one another. We have one DOT agency trying to direct more trucks onto our Nation's highways during the daylight hours, and then we have a second agency that is pushing funding out to cities in order to keep those same large trucks from operating during daylight hours and to encourage them to operate during overnight hours.

Why we would want to prevent or discourage large trucks from being able to drive during overnight hours simply makes no sense.

On the other hand, my colleague from New Jersey says: Don't worry, we have kept in the study. We have kept the Collins study in the bill.

Well, if it has been studied so extensively, as he claims, then why is there a need for the study? You can't have it both ways. You can't say these regulations were thoroughly studied and supported by scientific evidence, but, gee, we need a study. I mean, which is it?

I think what the Administrator admitted in her testimony over on the House side is accurate, and that is the field study did not look at the overall impact of congestion on our roads, and that is a real flaw. That is why I worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come up with a study that will look at all of these factors, to make sure that we do not have what the Administrator herself has conceded are unintended consequences of these changes, and that is what we have now.

The fact is that these changes that were adopted by a vote of 21 to 9 by the Appropriations Committee are common sense. They will lead to less fatigued drivers. They deserve more study and consideration, and--as the former Administrator of this agency has said--they will improve traffic safety.

I hope my colleagues will oppose the amendment that has been offered by the Senator from New Jersey. I will speak further, but I know there are others who want to debate this issue or who are waiting to speak.

I yield the floor.

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