Scofflaw Carriers Targeted For Safety Equipment
FMCSA proposes mandatory electronic onboard recorders for fleets that chronically violate driver hours of service rules.
Oliver B.Patton
Washington Editor
Truck lines that fail to meet hours of service standards would be required to install electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs) to track driver hours under a new proposal by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
While the agency would get tough with scofflaw carriers, it wants to encourage voluntary use of the recorders by using a lighter touch in its safety analysis and easing its requirements for documents that prove the accuracy of log entries. And to allay driver concerns about privacy, the agency does not want recorders to show any information not related to hours of service.
The proposal also spells out new performance standards for the devices, taking into account the myriad technological developments that have occurred since the current voluntary rule was established in 1988.
This proposal has been long in the making. An earlier version surfaced in 2000 as part of the comprehensive hours of service reform and proposed mandatory recorders for all long-haul and regional carriers. That idea sparked strong industry objections, and the agency backed off.
The EOBR question was separated from the HOS rule in 2003 and given its own rulemaking track. The agency said at the time that it needed more information, and it got what it wanted: No fewer than seven studies, plus peer reviews by other federal agencies and voluminous comments from the public, helped shape this proposal.
It will probably require two more years of work before the final version is written, said FMCSA Administrator John Hill.
Reaction from a major trucking interest group was positive, at least with respect to the general approach the agency is taking.
"We support this incentive-based approach to the use of electronic on-board recorders," said Bill Graves, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations.
Owner-operator interests, however, were not impressed. At first glance, "It looks a lot like Big Brother," said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. "We don't see it being effective in terms of improving highway safety, because it only measures time when the truck is moving, rather than time spent lumping cargo on the dock."
The safety advocacy community was scathing in its assessment, calling it a "do-nothing rule."
"The agency's effort at safety oversight and enforcement is so pitifully weak that it is a sure bet that almost no motor carriers will be found with the level of violations that will require them to install EOBRs," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen.
Here's a brief summary of what the agency is proposing.
The 10-Percent Solution
The agency would require a carrier to use electronic recorders in all its trucks if the carrier violates the hours of service rules 10 percent or more of the time, as determined in two compliance reviews within a two-year period.
After one violation, the carrier would be fined. "But if they do it again, we're going to require them to get a little bit more strict about how they monitor their compliance," Hill said. "They obviously don't have the systems in place to catch those kinds of violations. We're going to require them to have technology that will allow them to do that more readily."
If ordered to install recorders, a carrier would have to keep them for at least two years.
The agency's basic tool for gathering information about HOS violations is roadside inspections. The agency and the states conduct nearly 3 million roadside inspections each year.
"If there are problems occurring at the roadside, that will feed into our compliance review system," Hill said. The agency is looking for comments on other methods of triggering a mandatory EOBR installation, he said.
Asked why the agency does not propose to simply require recorders for all carriers, Hill replied that the costs of such an approach would outweigh the benefits.
"With the size of the carrier population and the number of trucks involved, we want to make sure that we can come up with a rule that really addresses the problem area," he said. "We would like to address this initially with the people who demonstrate a safety performance problem. They are non-compliant. We think that by focusing on those people we can drive the (accident) numbers down."
In fact, the mandatory provision of the rule would affect only a minute percentage of the national fleet. The agency estimates that at any given time, about 930 carriers with 16,000 tractors and 17,500 drivers would be required to use recorders. That's just 0.14 percent of the estimated 650,000 carriers regulated by the FMCSA.
Incentives
"We would like to see everybody move to voluntary use of (EOBRs)," Hill said. "A lot of companies are using (them) now because they find value in applying these technologies to their overall management operation. It helps them identify problems in the way drivers are performing or not performing."
The agency in its proposal notes that some carriers are reluctant to switch from paper logs to recorders because electronic records would make it easier for investigators to play "gotcha" with minor violations.
"We believe these concerns are warranted," the agency said.
To help overcome them, the agency wants to ease its compliance evaluation procedures for carriers that voluntarily use recorders. The standard review of driver records focuses on drivers that are expected to have compliance problems. If that review finds an HOS violation rate of 10 percent or more, the agency would conduct a second review of a random sample of other drivers' records. The results of the second review, rather than the first, would be used in the carrier's safety rating calculation.
The agency also is proposing to ease its supporting document requirements for carriers that voluntarily use recorders. Carriers that keep the time and location data produced by recorders would have to produce supporting documents only to verify on-duty/not-driving activities, and off-duty status.
To answer concerns that recorders invade driver and carrier privacy, the agency said it would not require recorders to keep track of engine speed or to display information other than what's necessary to determine compliance with the HOS rules.
Hill said the agency is looking for ideas on other ways to encourage voluntary use of recorders.
Performance Requirements
A big piece of the proposal is focused on the technical side of the issue. It says the device must be able to identify the driver and track duty status as well as the date, time, location, distance traveled and other information such as truck number or shipping document number.
The proposal does not say how the driver should be identified, so carriers could use their existing ID systems.
In a big change from the current rule, the proposal says the recorder would not have to be integrally synchronized with the engine. It could use global positioning or another tracking system, so long as it records location at least once a minute. The device would have to perform a self-test on demand and warn the driver if it's not working.
To simplify enforcement, all recorders would have to display data in the same way, Hill said. They would have to produce parallel streams of original and modified entries, so the data could be audited. Data transfer could be either hardwired or wireless.
These technical requirements would apply to new trucks built starting two years after the effective date of a final rule. Carriers that now use recorders would be allowed to keep them for the life of the tractor, as would carriers that voluntarily install recorders within the two-year period.
The proposal was scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on Jan. 18. To view it and other material concerning the rule, including the underlying research, go to http://dms.dot.gov/, select "Simple Search" and enter docket number 18940. Select "Reverse Order" to see the most recent entries. Comments are due by April 18.
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