Truckit: No new fatigue rules needed, trucking group says - Business

By Jeff Plungis

Pulled From Ohio.Com
Bloomberg News
Published: September 7, 2011 - 12:12 AM

A trucking regulation on President Barack Obama’s list of billion-dollar policy proposals should be scuttled because existing rules are cost-effective and work well, the American Trucking Associations said.

Transportation Department regulations already in effect on driving-timelimits have “helped trucking achieve unprecedented highway-safety gains,” wrote David Osiecki, senior vice president of policy and regulartory affairs for the Arlington, Va., trade group. The new rules would “impose new and unwarranted costs,” he said.Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood should scrap the proposal to comply with White House Chief of Staff William Daley’s instructions to Cabinet members to make economic growth and job creation the guiding principles in shaping regulation, Osiecki said in the letter.

He addressed it to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Obama listed seven proposals, including two for the trucking industry, in an Aug. 30 letter to House Speaker John Boehner, responding to the Ohio Republican’s request for pending regulations that would cost business $1 billion or more. Another trucking group, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said Sept. 1 those initiatives are so politically sensitive they might not survive.