A U.S. Senate committee recently heard unsettling testimony from people who had lost loved ones in accidents caused by sleepy truck drivers. Anyone would naturally sympathize with their suffering.
But the federal government is proposing a new rule for truckers that probably won't solve the problem. Washington wants to limit the time that truckers may drive to 10 straight hours - down from the current 11.
We can't judge the exact number of hours that truckers should drive. But the 10-hour "solution" is an odd way to fix the problem. Accidents cited in the Senate involved, in some cases, drivers who had illegally driven far in excess of the current 11-hour maximum. In one accident, the driver was believed to have been awake for the biggest part of the 35 hours preceding the tragedy!
The problem isn't that the current 11-hour limit on driving was "too long." It's that the limit was ignored.
But the Teamsters union is backing the 10-hour limit on truckers. The trucking industry suspects that's just a way for the Teamsters to force the industry to hire more people.
We want our roads to be safe, and sleepy drivers in any type of vehicle are dangerous. But employees in many lines of business put in workdays that exceed 10 hours. Unduly slashing the potential working hours of hundreds of thousands of truckers nationwide will reduce productivity, put more trucks on the road, and raise prices for consumers.
There should be enforcement of existing limits on truckers' hours, not imposition of a new rule that likely won't improve safety.