According to a December 11, 2007 item from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the FMCSA will continue to abide by rules governing truckers’ driving hours–even though these rules have been struck down by a United States Court of Appeals.

The agency will keep allowing truckers to drive 11 hours at a stretch and up to 88 hours in an 8-day period. The agency believes that the best way to deal with the problem of fatigued drivers of big rig trucks is to allow them to drive even more hours than past rules have allowed.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the work rules in 2004, calling them “arbitrary and capricious” and chastising the agency for “questionable rationality.” Again in 2007 the court rebuked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, saying it had “failed to provide an explanation for critical elements” of its rule. The court explicitly refused to “supply a reasoned basis for the agency’s actions that the agency itself has not given.”

Source: http://www.iihs.org/announcements.html