Truck Safety Groups: 5-Year Exemption Would ‘Gut’ ELD Rule
The Trucking Alliance, which consists of motor carrier members, contends that granting a 5-year exemption to smaller carriers would ‘gut’ the ELD rule. Photo: Knight Transportation
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Is there such a thing as granting too big an exemption to the electronic logging rule? That’s the gist of joint comments submitted to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration by a safety advocacy group composed of motor carriers and a highway-safety lobby.
The joint comments pertain to a request filed with the agency back in November by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association for a five-year exemption to the electronic-logging device rule for motor carriers “considered to be a small transportation trucking business.”
OOIDA’s request “would gut the long-settled electronic logging device rule by allowing nearly all trucking companies to delay compliance,” said the Alliance for Driver Safety and Security (aka the Trucking Alliance) and the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (“Advocates”) in a Feb. 1 press release.
Their statement goes on to characterize OOIDA’s request as “a transparent attempt to bypass Congress and the courts by regurgitating discredited arguments which seek to advance special interests at the expense of road safety for all motorists.”
While the five-year exemption request was filed over two months ago, it is but one of several exemptions either issued by FMCSA or requested of the agency since the ELD mandate kicked in on Dec. 18. For example, just two days before word of these joint comments was released, the agency said it is considering a request by one motor carrier for a one-year exemption from electronic logging rules as having been made “on behalf of all motor carriers in similar situations…”
Click here for our story on exemptions tied to PeopleNet AOBRD issue
According to the OOIDA request, filed with FMCSA on Nov. 21, the self-certification of ELD vendors …Read the rest of this story
