When drivers have to sit for hours waiting for a dock to open up, legally they are on duty. If they then have to supervise loading or unloading to make sure their trailers aren’t torn up, they continue to be on duty. If the whole process takes eight hours (not so unusual), that leaves drivers with just two hours of legal driving time under the current rules before they have to pull over for an eight-hour rest.

It’s difficult to meet the letter of the law in that situation and still continue to earn a living as a driver, especially if you’re an owner/operator. Shippers and receivers know it, or at least they should. But if the driver chooses real-world demands over HOS rules and gets stopped, he or she pays the price, not the shipper.

The reality is shippers can base loading practices on their convenience, totally ignoring driver needs, and receivers can demand delivery times that ignore routine loading delays. That leaves drivers with nothing but tough choices about staying well-rested.

While the extra hour of driving time offered by the new rules is certainly welcomed by most drivers, the revision does nothing to address that basically unfair situation, or at least not directly.

If DOT ever gets around to clarifying the gray area created by its “split sleeper berth exemption,” single drivers will have to stop driving 14 hours after they first go on duty even if much of that time was spent waiting for a load. The disruption to delivery schedules caused by that “continuous” on-duty rule would certainly get the attention of shippers and their customers. The hope is they’ll react by changing their ways at the loading dock.

But that’s far from a sure thing. As it stands now, too much control remains in the hands of those who have no legal or economic incentives to actually deal with driver fatigue. And that’s the way it will remain until shippers and receivers are also held directly accountable for their role in keeping tired drivers off the roads.