The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) is beginning research to develop a framework for assessing the impacts of trucking industry regulations.
The framework development will initially be focused on “Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Hours-of-Service (HOS) and the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Mandate.”
Industry stakeholders, including motor carriers, truck drivers, and law enforcement, are all encouraged to take the HOS/ELD survey here.
ATRI said its Research Advisory Committee recognized a need to develop a framework for assessing the costs and benefits of regulations governing the trucking industry and identified the framework as a top priority in 2026. The research survey launches as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration pursues a real-world test of possible new flexibilities in the hours regs with participating drivers and carriers.
In the HOS/ELD survey, respondents will assess the overall HOS rules, the ELD mandate, and nine specific provisions of the two regulations:
- 11-hour driving limit (HOS)
- 14-hour on-duty limit (HOS)
- 30-minute break requirement (HOS)
- 60/70-hour limit (HOS)
- Split-sleeper berth provision (HOS)
- Personal conveyance (HOS)
- Device registration and certification requirements (ELD)
- Record backup and security requirements (ELD)
- 8-day paper log exemption (ELD)
Respondents will be asked to assess the regulations according to their safety benefit and cost of compliance. The survey will also ask respondents for recommended changes to each of the provisions to improve their safety benefit and lower the cost of compliance, providing a roadmap for policy improvements.
As noted, this first phase and data collection is focused on the HOS and ELD regulations, but the emerging benefit-cost framework is intended to be applied to and evaluate other trucking regulations across safety, workforce, and the environment.
Interested participants are asked to respond by Oct. 16. All responses will be kept entirely confidential, and data will only be presented in an aggregated, anonymized format.
