FMCSA files addition to HOS rules analysis

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration today filed an addendum to its regulatory impact analysis of proposed hours-of-service rules, which were published as an NPRM in the Federal Register Jan. 24, 2005.

The new sections, required by the Office and Management and Budget for all “economically significant” rulemakings filed as of Jan. 1, 2005, include “uncertainty” and “cost-effective” analyses.

The point of the uncertainty analysis is to determine which factors used in the cost-benefit calculations are most likely to affect the results. For HOS rules, the FMCSA identified 20 variables, such as percent of longhaul drivers with intense schedules and percent of all crashes where driver fatigue plays a role. Using the ranked variables, the new analysis determined that there was an “80% chance that total annual costs of this rulemaking would fall between $1- and $1.5-billion.” The original estimate put the cost at $1.3 billion.

The cost-effectiveness of a regulation is the relationship between the cost of implementation and the benefits that result. The new analysis estimates that implementation of HOS rules will result in “a total annual cost of $10.8-million for each fatality prevented, and $0.4 million for each injury prevented.”

Comments to the proposal are due by Mar. 10, 2005.

For more details, see Docket FMCSA-2004-19608 in the Federal Register.