EOBR Rule Soon to Be Revealed as White House Gives Approval
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the March 29 print edition of Transport Topics.
The White House Office of Management and Budget said last week it signed off on an electronic on-board recorders rule, clearing the way for the regulation to be published soon in the Federal Register.
Also last week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sent a notice of proposed rulemaking to OMB to ban texting by commercial drivers.
A trucking official said he did not expect the EOBR rule, which could include a mandate for some carriers to use the devices, to change much from the earlier proposal.
“I don’t expect it to differ radically from the proposal,” said Dave Osiecki, senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs for American Trucking Associations. “The public policy approach will still be a remedial directive for noncompliant carriers. There will still be incentives; there will still be performance specs — the only real question is how many carriers will fall under the remedial directive.”
Under the initial proposal crafted by FMCSA during the Bush administration, carriers with poor hours-of-service compliance would have been required to use an EOBR.
At the time, the agency estimated that about 930 carriers representing 17,500 drivers would be immediately affected.
The proposal was criticized by members of Congress and advocacy groups for not going far enough. The initial proposal suggested there would be incentives for the voluntary use of EOBRs, but it is unclear how that provision could be included in the final rule because the supporting documents regulation also has yet to be issued.
Meanwhile, FMCSA’s texting rule follows its regulatory guidance earlier this year that banned the practice among commercial drivers.
However, FMCSA said at that time that it planned to move forward on a full regulation, in part because several states said they either cannot, or do not intend to, enforce the ban until there is a firm rule in place (click here for previous story).
Osiecki said he was curious to see what exactly was in FMCSA’s proposal.
“They have to be doing something a little different in this rule,” he said. “They banned it by guidance; now they’re going to do it by rule. What are they going to propose? They’ve already done it.”
Stephen Keppler, interim executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, declined to comment on the specifics of the texting rule, telling Transport Topics that the enforcement group “will be prepared to comment on the rule, once it comes out.”
According to a Department of Transportation report on rules, the texting ban is slated for a brief review by OMB, then to be published this spring.
