A leading highway safety coalition is urging federal officials not to lengthen how long commercial drivers can be on duty — a move the group says would add fatigue risk without clear safety benefits, even if the underlying driving-limit caps remain unchanged. The warning lands as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) wraps up public comments on pilot proposals that would allow drivers to pause their on-duty “clock” or use additional sleeper-berth splits, effectively stretching some workdays.
The stakes for carriers are operational, legal and reputational. Expanding the usable on-duty window — whether via a mid‑shift pause or new split‑sleeper options — could smooth schedules around detention, weather and urban congestion. But it would also shift more driving and non‑driving work into later hours of the day, when fatigue and circadian lows tend to stack up. That is the crux of the safety community’s objection highlighted in FreightWaves’ reporting: flexibility on paper can morph into pressure in practice, especially where detention and tight delivery windows are routine.
Context from Washington underscores why the debate matters now. On Monday, November 17, 2025, FMCSA published a new information-collection notice aimed at analyzing crash risk by driver schedule patterns — duty status, shift timing and related variables — to inform policy. In other words, even as the agency tests flexibility, it is simultaneously seeking fresh data on how schedule design correlates with crashes and violations. For fleets, that’s a signal: the next several months are likely to bring sharper scrutiny of how hours are used, not just how they’re logged.
For trucking operators, the practical implications cut three ways:
– Dispatch and planning: A sanctioned mid‑shift pause might help drivers wait out gridlock or detention without losing drive time. But if customers treat a pause as “free time,” detention could expand unless contracts are updated. Build explicit rules into carrier–shipper agreements on when a pause is driver‑initiated for rest versus shipper‑requested waiting.
– Safety management systems: If pilots proceed, expect FMCSA to scrutinize how fleets monitor late‑shift driving, nap timing, and post‑pause alertness. Proactive controls — fatigue training, hard limits on back‑to‑back extended days, and real‑time coaching — will carry more weight than boilerplate policies when investigators examine a crash timeline.
– Productivity math: Flexibility doesn’t guarantee more revenue miles. Night‑shift exposure, reduced parking availability at later hours, and tighter ELD audit trails can erode any theoretical gains. Model these tradeoffs lane‑by‑lane before changing standard operating procedures.
For drivers, advocates’ core concern is coercion risk: when a rule intended to let a professional rest when needed becomes a lever to squeeze more work into a calendar day. That’s why comments from safety groups zero in on cumulative fatigue across the week, not just a single 16‑ or 17‑hour elapsed day. If FMCSA ultimately green‑lights either pilot, watch for guardrails around consecutive extended days, documentation that a pause was driver‑directed, and clearer anti‑coercion language — all areas that will affect how flexibility is actually felt on the road.
Bottom line for fleets: regardless of how the pilots shake out, FMCSA’s fresh request for schedule–crash data points to a policy path anchored in “when” and “how” drivers work, not only “how long.” Building evidence that your operation uses any new flexibility to reduce risk — for example, to shift work away from peak congestion or to enable restorative rest — will be as important as compliance with the letter of the rules.
Sources: FreightWaves, govinfo.gov
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