ARLINGTON, Va. -- The American Trucking Associations has accused administrators at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, as well as safety advocates, of obsessing over hours-to-service rules in addressing driver fatigue issues and ignoring other solutions and safety issues.

The obsession has prevented progress on a number of more pressing safety concerns, says ATA President and CEO Bill Graves.

"Report after report, from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrations own Large Truck Crash Causation Study, to the most recent annual report on truck and bus safety facts, shows fatigue is not a leading cause of crashes," said Graves.

"By putting an incredibly resource-intensive focus on this (hours-of-service) rule, FMCSA and these advocacy groups have foregone progress on areas ranging from speed, to safety technologies, to driver training that would have a much larger impact on highway safety," Graves asserted.

According to the ATA, quoting the Large Truck Crash Causation Study and other federal data sources, three quarters of all fatal and serious truck crashes involve at least one other vehicle, typically a passenger car.

In a majority of cases, accident investigations assign the critical reason for the crash to the passenger vehicle, but when it is assigned to the truck, nine times out of 10, the issues lie with the actions of the driver.

"Put most simply, these crashes are caused by unsafe driver behaviors such as speeding, driving too fast for conditions, or distracted and inattentive driving, or unfortunate mistakes related to unfamiliarity with his or her surroundings or driving conditions," Graves said.

"We have long advocated that FMCSA do more to address aggressive and unsafe driving and for the increased use of advanced safety technologies, but to date those pleas have been largely overlooked."

The USDOT preoccupation with determining the size and stickiness of the hours-of-service band-aid to address complex fatigue issues to cater to small, organized labor-backed and perhaps well-intentioned "safety" advocates, has done little to address the vast majority of car-truck crashes, said Graves.

"The 2009 Truck and Bus Safety Facts report from FMCSA showed that fatigue was the cause of just 1.4 percent of crashes and the Large Truck Crash Causation Study said fatigue was associated with, but not the cause of, 13 percent of crashes," Graves said.

"That means that between 87 percent and 98 percent of serious crashes will be unaffected by changing the hours rules.

"When looking at highway safety, regulators have an obligation to spend the publics resources to implement programs and countermeasures that will do the most good, and it seems clear that the leadership at DOT and FMCSA are failing to address larger crash causes to placate special interests fixated on a relatively small part of the crash problem," he said.