Truck Speed-Limiter Rule Stalls in Trump’s Washington
Photo: FMCSA
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Photo: FMCSA
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The drive to mandate speed-limiters on trucks has sputtered out— at least for now— courtesy of the Trump Administration’s push to cut federal regulations.
The revised “unified agenda,” published on July 20 by the Office of Management and Budget, reveals that a speed-limiter rule has fallen off the near-term agendas for both the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“By amending and eliminating regulations that are ineffective, duplicative, and obsolete, the administration can promote economic growth and innovation and protect individual liberty,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement upon posting the updated agenda.
After a decade-long push by trucking and safety advocates, last August the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and FMCSA jointly proposed a rule that would require heavy-duty vehicles to be equipped with speed-limiting devices.
The rule would require each vehicle, as manufactured and sold, to have its device set to a speed not greater than a specified speed and to be equipped with means of reading the vehicle’s current speed setting and the two previous speed settings through its onboard diagnostic connection. And carriers would be required to maintain the speed-limiting device for the service life of the vehicle.
But no actual speed limit was proposed for the devices. DOT only proposed discussing “the benefits of setting the maximum speed at 60, 65, and 68 mph” and that it “will consider other speeds based on public input.”
Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, ATA’s Spear slammed the proposal last October for its lack of specificity and the dearth of research backing it up. “The various differentials in speed from what this rule proposes and what state speed limits are is dangerous,” he contended.
More than 5,400 public comments were filed on the proposal, after …Read the rest of this story
