ARLINGTON, Va. — Two "unrealistic" provisions in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration‘s recent final rule on electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs) should be reconsidered, stakeholders say.

The American Trucking Associations, law enforcement officials, and a chorus of industry suppliers filed a petition with the FMCSA over the rule’s requirement that soon-to-be-mandated EOBRs be able to operate in temperatures ranging from minus 40 degrees to 85 degrees Celsius and that the devices be capable of transferring data using a single Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector.

"The impact of the Appendix A technical requirements … would force the industry to develop significantly more expensive hardware and to incur extraordinary transitional costs in order to be compliant," the request said.

The new rule was published on April 2 and calls for carriers with 10 percent or more HOS violations during a compliance review to install EOBRs in all their vehicles for a minimum of two years.

The agency indicated this rule is an interim step and that a "broader mandate’ — possibly requiring EOBRs for all carriers to some degree — would be drafted later on.

The temperature provision would make the devices more expensive and would force handheld devices that interface with the recorder to meet the same standard, said Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for the ATA.

The groups recommend the FMCSA either remove the temperature operating range from the rule, or apply this lower range for specification.

The petition also points out that most EOBR devices do not normally support USB Type B connectors, but they do support Type A connectors, such as USB mass storage devices, thumb drives or flash drives.

Without including those options, the rule would require retrofits and create interoperability with law enforcement laptops.

In addition to the ATA, top executives at Qualcomm, PeopleNet, Xata Corp., Continental Corp.; and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance signed the petition.

"We hope that these issues can be fixed before the rule goes into effect," Abbott said.

— with files from Truckinginfo.com