Truckit: ATA Tells FMCSA: 'Policy Changes Must be Based on Sound Research and Data'

From PRnewswire.com

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In today's public listening session on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's recently released hours-of-service proposal, American Trucking Associations Senior Vice President Dave Osiecki told the agency to put facts and data before politics.

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"Policy changes must be based on sound research and data, not pressure or politics," Osiecki, ATA's senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, told FMCSA officials, "and their benefits must outweigh the costs," he said. "The proposed HOS changes do not pass the test on any of these principles."

Osiecki noted that those pillars are at the core of the Obama administration's recent push to improve the regulatory process, yet are ignored by FMCSA in this proposal.

In an attempt to justify one component of its proposal, FMCSA leans on a study of just 12 people conducted at an in-residence laboratory and released just weeks before the agency's proposal. The study itself recommends "validation of the study findings . . . in a real-world field study," Osiecki said.

FMCSA, Osiecki said, also "relies on a completely different, less sophisticated method" in its regulatory impact analysis than it had in the past in order to calculate the costs and dubious benefits of the proposed changes.

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