Opinion ID: 186266
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Thirty-Four-Hour Restart

Text: 61 One further problematic aspect of the agency's explanation for the rule concerns the thirty-four-hour restart provision. As discussed, this provision has the effect of increasing the maximum number of hours drivers can work each week. The agency justified the restart on the ground that after having thirty-four hours of rest, drivers have the opportunity to get seven-to-eight hours of continuous rest, and because the restart will help drivers keep a regular schedule. 68 Fed.Reg. at 22,479. For example, if a driver gets off work at 8 p.m. Saturday after starting work that day at 6 a.m. (a fourteen-hour day), the thirty-four-hour restart would allow him to restart work at 6 a.m. Monday, thus allowing him to start work at the same time of day he started on Saturday. Moreover, continued the agency, the restart provision will enable drivers the flexibility to take their sleep during the day, and enable them to drive at night, when the number of cars on the road is fewest. Id. 62 While the agency's explanation seems sound enough as far as it goes, it does not even acknowledge, much less justify, that the rule, as petitioners point out and as explained above, dramatically increases the maximum permissible hours drivers may work each week. That increase is likely an important aspect of the problem. State Farm, 463 U.S. at 43, 103 S.Ct. at 2866. And the agency's failure to address it, accordingly, makes this aspect of the rule's rationality questionable.