GRAIN VALLEY, MO - Just mere days after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration unveiled regulations that will take effect in two years requiring most U.S. truckers to use electronic logging devices (ELD) the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has filed a lawsuit to stop the requirement.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) on Thursday announced the adoption new regulations that will require the use of electronic logging devices (ELD) for truckers to keep track of their hours of service. The rules, which are set to be published on Dec. 16, will take effect two years afterwards and require Canadian and Mexican domiciled drivers to use the devices when operating on U.S. roadways. The regulations have a few exemptions that were not in the 2014 proposal, including excepting drivers who keep records of duty status in eight or fewer days out of every 30 working days; drivers in drive-away and tow-away operations and truckers operating vehicles older than model year 2000.
TORONTO, ON - Thursday's announcement of the final U.S. rule requiring the use of electronic logging devices (ELD) in late 2017, puts Canada "under the gun" to do the same thing, according to one group here at home, while reaction to the plan where it was born is mixed. The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) says the move by the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration removes any remaining argument for the Canadian governments not to move forward with a similar mandate in Canada.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed new regulations that focus on upgrading its Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSSs) that address underride protection in light-vehicle crashes into the rear of trailers and semitrailers.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - There are several items of importance to Canadian fleets and drivers who haul in United States in highway legislation passed by Congress and signed into law Friday by President Obama. Know as the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), it authorizes spending US$305 billion on highways and transit. But in trucking its likely better known for the special provisions that made into the new law - and those that didn't. Overall, the reaction from the various trucking groups, ranging from those representing fleets to drivers, has generally been positive. While many did not get everything they wanted in the new law, it marks the first time a federal highway funding bill longer than two years has been passed since 2005.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has announced new regulations that will take effect on Jan. 29, 2016 that it believes will help further safeguard commercial truck and bus drivers from being compelled to violate federal safety regulations. The rules over so-called driver coercion, provides FMCSA with the authority to take enforcement action not only against motor carriers, but also against shippers, receivers, and transportation intermediaries. The regulations address three key areas concerning driver coercion: procedures for commercial truck and bus drivers to report incidents of coercion to the FMCSA, steps the agency could take when responding to such allegations, and penalties of up to US$16,000 that may be imposed on entities found to have coerced drivers.
There's hope these days that one of the worst examples of safety legislation ever devised in the U.S. will get a makeover in the next year or so. That may be optimistic, but with a multi-year highway bill now almost through the Washington meat grinder, the Compliance, Safety and Accountability (CSA) program looks bound to change. One of the bill's many aims is one that would require the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to rework its mighty flawed reporting regime. Common sense, that oh-so-rare feature of regulatory reality, may yet prevail. And that would be a boon to the thousands of Canadian carriers, drivers, and owner-operators who use American highways. Like their south-of-the-border counterparts, they might just see an end to what can frequently be wildly unfair safety assessments based on flawed principles and weird math. If you don't want to wait, and I sure wouldn't, there's help at hand. It comes from Vigillo LLC, a data-mining company that offers fleet subscribers a rather sophisticated CSA analytics service. It's designed to aggregate, organize, and deliver complex carrier safety data in a scorecard format. More particularly, the help comes from a new and additional service called JUST, which will properly examine an accident submitted for review by subscriber carriers.