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Virginia Tech undertakes restart study, looking for 250 driver participants

BLACKSBURG, Va. — The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is looking for some 250 truck drivers to participate in the Congressionally-mandated study that could ultimately determine whether drivers have unlimited use of the 34-hour restart provision or whether they will only be allowed a restart only once every 168 hours and then must include two consecutive 1 a. m.-5 a.m. time periods.

VTTI was awarded a $4 million contract by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to conduct the study.

Commercial truck drivers for years have been required to follow Hours of Service rules while on the job, taking required rest or sleep breaks between long periods of driving.

A federal spending bill that enacted Dec. 16, 2014, suspended the restart provisions that allowed drivers to use the restart only once a week and required the two overnight time periods.

The bill reinstated the former rule that allows unlimited use of the restart provision and did not require the overnight periods.

As part of the Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Restart Study, VTTI will track and compare truck driver fatigue and safety performance levels for drivers who operate under the suspended rule versus those who operate under the former rule, which is now in effect until at least Sept. 25.

Drivers who are interested in participating in the study can find out more information at http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/research-and-analysis/get-involved-hours-service-driver-restart-study.

“We are excited by the opportunity and have assembled a world-class team to lead this landmark study mandated by Congress,” said Richard Hanowski, director of the safety center. “A better understanding in which the two restart provisions are being implemented by drivers, and to better quantify fatigue and the relative road safety risk, is an extremely important issue for highway safety. We have an opportunity to perform ground-breaking research that will have impact for decades to come.”

Hanowski and his team will recruit an estimated 250 truck drivers for the on-road study. The team will compare five-month work schedules of drivers, assessing crashes, near-crashes, crash-relevant conflicts, operator fatigue/alertness, and short-term health outcomes for the two groups of commercial truck drivers.

Drivers are being recruited from small, medium, and large fleets across a variety of operations — long-haul, short-haul, and regional — to help ensure statistically significant results. The research plan also involves including a variety of haul types in the study, including flat-bed, refrigerated, tanker, and dry-van trailers.

“Our Truck and Bus Safety center is well-suited to lead this research based on past work we have done in this field,” said Hanowski, adding that the center has previously spearheaded studies about HOS regulations for FMCSA. “We have coordinated similar projects that were smaller. This will be the largest study of its kind ever performed using commercial vehicle drivers.”

Hanowski’s team will track driver road-time and resting/sleeping status via onboard electronic logging devices, which track a driver’s on-duty time and record and measure safety-critical events, according to the FMCSA mandate. The team also will measure and code fatigue levels of drivers using high-tech watches that are worn on the wrist.

“Truck driver fatigue is a prevalent problem and is a tremendous safety concern on our nation’s highways,” said Thomas A. Dingus, director of the institute and an endowed professor with the Virginia Tech Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

However, trucking stakeholders insist fatigue is not as prevalent as federal regulators and safety advocates believe it is.

“The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is honored to be selected to undertake this study that will help provide the solution. We are privileged to have the resources necessary to help inform policy makers in a collaborative effort to significantly reduce the number of safety-critical events occurring on our roadways,” Dingus said.

The institute is tasked with producing a final study report that will be subject to independent peer review panels with both medical and scientific expertise. The study findings will ultimately be delivered to the U.S. Department of Transportation and Congress.

The Trucker staff can be reached to comment on this article at [email protected].

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