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For the second time in three years, the trucking industry has found a friend in Senator Susan Collins.

The Maine Republican got a rider attached to the spending bill approved over the weekend so truckers will no longer have to get two nights sleep in a row before starting a work week. Suspending year-old federal regulations means truckers will be allowed to work as many as 82 hours over eight days -- upending what safety advocates said was a key component of a 15-year effort to reduce deaths caused by drowsy long-haul drivers.

I am seriously concerned that this suspension will put lives at risk, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said last week in a letter to lawmakers urging them to drop the measure.

Collins convinced a bipartisan majority of the Senate Appropriations Committee to support the suspension in June, just days before a trucker who police said had not slept for more than 24 hours slammed his rig into a limousine carrying comedian Tracy Morgan on the New Jersey Turnpike. Morgan, a former star of NBCs Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, was badly hurt and fellow comedian James McNair was killed.

The bill that the measure was attached to didnt advance. Last week, defying a last-minute push by safety advocates and Foxx, the rider ended up in the $1.1 trillion spending plan Congress passed and sent to President Barack Obama on Dec. 13 to avert a government shutdown.

I care deeply about safety on our nations roads, and no one wants to see an accident caused by driver fatigue or by any other cause, Collins said in a statement last week. But, she said, the suspended rest rules presented some unintended and unanticipated consequences that require further study.

In 2011, Collins shepherded a measure also supported by the trucking industry that allows bigger trucks on Maines interstate highways for 20 years.

This years legislative victory followed an intense lobbying campaign by trucking groups, who argued the Transportation Department hadnt taken into account the consequences of its rules, like forcing more trucks onto the road during early morning rush hours because of stipulations that their weekly work breaks include at least two nights.

Small-business truckers applaud the House and Senate for rejecting scare tactics, said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of Grain Valley, Missouri-based Owner Operators Independent Drivers Association.

The Collins amendment suspends until Oct. 1, and orders a study of, rules the Transportation Department implemented last year. Under those rules, drivers, after working 70 hours over eight days, were required to rest for 34 hours before beginning another workweek. And that had to include two consecutive nights from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.

Excerpt from:
Maine Senator Is Again Friend to Trucking as Rule Eased