The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration denied an application from the American Trucking Associations made on March 28, 2016 seeking an exemption from the 14-hour “driving window” limit for drivers who work at oil and natural gas extraction sites. The ATA attempted to create an exemption by excluding the time that drivers wait for cargo to be loaded and unloaded as “on duty” time. The theory being that they could log that time as rest time or “off-duty” time, thus extending the 14-hour on-duty window.  The FMCSA, however, denied the ATA’s application, concluding that the group “did not demonstrate how the commercial motor vehicle operations under such an exemption would achieve a level of safety equivalent to or greater than the level of safety obtained in the absence of the exemption.” The agency further indicated that fatigue would increase under such an exemption, thereby increasing danger, not alleviating it. Other advocacy groups including the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety weighed in, stating “The ATA’s arguments rely on what appears to be deliberate ignorance of regulatory history and a fundamental misrepresentation of agency findings in a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent the agency’s prior unambiguous determination that the drivers for which the ATA is seeking this exemption should specifically not be afforded this exemption.”