Indiana Wants ELD Rule Delayed

Trucking News
30 Nov by Vitaliy Dadalyan

Indiana Wants ELD Rule Delayed

In an eleventh hour request, the Attorney General of Indiana has proposed that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration delay implementation of the electronic logging device rule set for Dec. 18— less than 3 weeks from today.

While numerous attempts to halt or delay the roll out of the ELD rule have been made in federal courts and on Capitol Hill, this request marks the first time a state official— and in this case, a very high-ranking official in a top trucking state— has advocated taking such action.

Attorney General Curtis T. Hill, Jr. (R) stated in a Nov. 29 letter to FMCSA Chief Counsel Randi Hutchison that a delay was needed because to “immediately begin requiring drivers to use ELDs exclusively (except, as the new rule allows, for those with on-board recording devices installed before December 18, 2017) would place undue burdens on drivers and operators.”

He outlined why his chief concern around the mandate is that there is no government or third-party verification in place for the ELD device self-certification process offered to suppliers by FMCSA.

“With manufacturers of ELDs currently responsible for ‘self-certifying’ their compliance with government standards — with no effective procedures seemingly yet developed to provide oversight over such ‘self-certifying’ — drivers and operators are left without any way of ascertaining which brands and models of devices ultimately will pass muster,” wrote Hill. “They must ‘fly blindly’ into investing in products they are being required to purchase.”

He then argued in detail that several crucial issues may result from the device certification and registration protocol now in place, including but not limited to the following:

ByVitaliy Dadalyan