The American Transportation Research Institute has commenced research to develop a framework for assessing the impacts of trucking industry regulations.
ATRI said the framework development will initially be focused on assessing the costs and benefits of hours-of-service and the electronic logging device mandates.
Industry stakeholders, including motor carriers, truck drivers, and law enforcement oficials, are all encouraged to take the HOS/ELD survey, according to ATRI.
Participants are asked to respond by Oct. 16. All responses will be kept confidential, and data will only be presented in an aggregated, anonymized format.
ATRI said its Research Advisory Committee identified this as a top priority in 2026.
In the survey, respondents will assess the overall HOS rules, the ELD mandate, and nine specific provisions of these two regulations. Respondents will be asked to assess the regulations according to their perceived safety benefit and cost of compliance. In addition, the survey will 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 possible policy improvements.
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 industry regulations across safety, workforce, and the environment. ATRIO said in a statement.
