Washington, D.C.-based transportation law and policy attorney Richard P. Schweitzer, PLLC, recently provided attendees at the National Private Truck Council’s annual conference a rundown of the status of several U.S. trucking regulations:<\/p>\n
As reported by Fleet Owner<\/em>, they include:<\/p>\n 34-hour Restart<\/strong><\/p>\n Schweitzer touched on the U.S. Congress’ \u00ab\u00a0fix\u00a0\u00bb to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) 34-hour restart rule reverting to pre-July 2013 restart for commercial drivers’ hours of service.<\/p>\n FMCSA studied the 34-hour restart and found no significant improvement with the rule regarding driver health, fatigue, safety or longevity, he noted, and the U.S. Dept. of Transportation (DOT) Inspector General confirmed that finding upon review of the study.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0By the language in the fiscal year 2016 DOT appropriations bill, the 34-hour restart remains as-is, and we don’t have to talk about it anymore,\u00a0\u00bb Schweitzer said. \u00ab\u00a0Just keep doing what you’ve been doing, and I don’t expect there to be any further changes to the Hours of Service rules in the near future.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n Safety Fitness Determination<\/strong><\/p>\n In March, FMCSA withdrew the Obama administration’s proposed rule on safety fitness determination standards and processes. The proposed rulemaking would have determined when a carrier is unfit to operate a commercial motor vehicle based on compliance investigations as well as on-road safety data.<\/p>\n The proposed rule would have established a system that instead of having three rating levels \u2014 satisfactory, conditional and unsatisfactory \u2014 would’ve been simply one rating of \u00ab\u00a0unfit,\u00a0\u00bb with everyone else presumed to be fit.<\/p>\n The problem with that, Schweitzer said, \u00ab\u00a0is that you wouldn’t have known whether a carrier had actually been rated or not,\u00a0\u00bb such as if a carrier didn’t have enough compliance reviews and roadside inspections to provide sufficient data to give the carrier a rating.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0So you’d have just assumed them to be safe, but that would not be a good assumption,\u00a0\u00bb he noted.<\/p>\n Congress mandated a study looking \u201cthe underlying assumptions and conclusions reached in developing the current CSA program.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n One of the largest issues regarding the methodology that FMCSA includes in those scores crashes that were not the commercial motor vehicle driver’s fault.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0The expectation is that there’s going to be a fairly pointed report that comes out of NAS that’s going to look at some serious problems with the Safety Measurement System methodology,\u00a0\u00bb he noted. That NAS report is expected sometime this summer, and FMCSA will come up with a corrective action plan within 120 days once it is issued.<\/p>\n Electronic logging devices (ELDs)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0The one final rule that everyone has to deal with this year is the electronic logging device rule,\u00a0\u00bb he said. With the ELD mandate taking effect Dec. 17, 2017, with a few exceptions, commercial motor vehicle drivers who are now required to keep paper logs recording their hours of service will need to be using either an ELD or a device meeting older requirements for automatic on-board recording devices, or AOBRDs.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0All of that’s going into effect in December, but we still have a problem with short-term rental vehicles,\u00a0\u00bb Schweitzer noted. The potential problem in that case \u2014 with \u00ab\u00a0short-term\u00a0\u00bb being defined as 30 days or less \u2014 is that fleets will need to rent a truck that could have an ELD system that doesn’t match their own, which is what their drivers will be trained to use.<\/p>\n Despite talk in some circles the Trump administration\u2019s directive to roll back regulations might have an effect on the ELD rule, Schweitzer noted that he hasn’t heard of any move to push back the current Dec. 17, 2017 effective date of the mandate.<\/p>\n Speed Limiters for Class 7 and 8 vehicles<\/strong><\/p>\n DOT\u2019s proposed speed-limiting device rule for all new Class 7 and 8 vehicles has a much steeper hill to climb, according to Schweitzer.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0The question is whether to require carriers to use these speed-limiting devices, and if so, what speed you’re going to require them to set it at,\u00a0\u00bb he said. DOT proposed setting upper speed limits of 60, 65 or 68 mph and sought comments on those or some other limit.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0Well, that’s really not a proposal \u2014 that’s just, ‘Give us some thoughts,'\u00a0\u00bb Schweitzer contended. DOT’s proposed rule would only apply to new vehicles and would not require existing ones to be retrofitted \u2014 although that’s also a point on which DOT asked for comments. Several U.S. senators have requested that existing vehicles be included.<\/p>\n \u00ab\u00a0What’s going to result from this? I think nothing, frankly,\u00a0\u00bb Schweitzer posited. \u00ab\u00a0This rulemaking came out of a proposal from [the American Trucking Assns.] and a number of motor carriers back around 2007. They thought it was good government at the time; they thought most carriers are using this anyway.<\/p>\n