WASHINGTON – As Dorris Edwards slowed for traffic near Kingdom City, Mo., on her way home from a Thanksgiving trip in 2004, an 18-wheeler slammed into her Jeep Cherokee.
The truck crushed her vehicle and shoved it down an embankment off Interstate 70. Edwards, 62, was killed.
The truck driver accepted blame for the accident, and Edwards' family filed a lawsuit against the driver and the trucking company, Werner Enterprises, which ultimately settled the lawsuit for $2.4 million.
In the case, a larger issue was raised: whether the Bush administration's decision to reject tighter industry regulation and instead reduce what officials viewed as cumbersome rules allowed a poorly trained trucker to stay behind the wheel, alone, instead of resting after a long day of driving.
After intense lobbying by the politically powerful trucking industry, regulators a year earlier had rejected proposals to tighten drivers' hours and instead did the opposite, relaxing the rules on how long truckers could be on the road. That allowed the driver who hit Edwards to work in the cab nearly 12 hours, eight of them driving nonstop, which he acknowledged had tired him.
Government officials also had turned down repeated requests from insurers and safety groups for more rigorous training for new drivers. The driver in the fatal accident was a rookie on his first cross-country trip; his instructor, a 22-year-old with just a year of trucking experience, had been sleeping in a berth behind the cab much of the way.
In loosening the standards, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was fulfilling President Bush's broader pledge to free industry of what it considered cumbersome rules. In the past six years, the White House has embarked on the boldest strategy of deregulation in more than a generation.
Largely unchecked by the Republican-led Congress, federal agencies, often led by former industry officials, have methodically reduced what they see as inefficient, outdated regulations and have delayed enforcement of others. The Bush administration says those efforts have produced huge savings for businesses and consumers.
Supporters say the loosened standards also promote safety; without longer work hours, the industry would be forced to put more drivers with little experience behind the wheel. Regulators and industry officials point out that the death toll of truck-related accidents has not increased, while the fatality rate – the number of deaths per miles traveled – has continued a long decline.
But advocates of tighter rules say the loosened standards endanger motorists. The fatality rate for truck-related accidents remains nearly double that involving only cars, safety and insurance groups say.
In decisions that had the support of the White House, the motor-carrier agency has eased the rules on truckers' work hours, rejected proposals for electronic monitoring to combat widespread cheating on drivers' logs and resisted calls for more rigorous driver training.
While applauded by the industry, those decisions have been subject to criticism by federal appeals courts that say they ignore government safety studies and put the industry's interests ahead of public safety.
