FMCSA Aims to Publish Revised HOS Rule, EOBR Mandate Before Jan. 1, Ferro Says

This story appears in the Dec. 6 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration now aims to publish its revisions to the hours-of-service rule and a proposed expansion of its electronic data recorder requirement by the end of the year, the agency’s head said last week.

FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said the HOS rule, which was expected to be published near the end of October but remains under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget, is one of several agenda items the agency plans to complete before the end of 2010.

“We have a lot of things that got pushed to the end of the year,” Ferro told a freight transportation forum at the Swedish Embassy here Dec. 1.

“We all know that rule is at OMB,” she said, “and that rule will be published as soon as OMB is finished with its review. We’re hoping, certainly by the end of this year, that’s our goal.”

Ferro said she couldn’t discuss what was in the rule, joking that the words “hours of service [are] about as much as I can say.”

In addition to the hours rule, Ferro said the agency would have its expanded electronic onboard recorder proposal “on the street at the end of this year.”

That rule, she said, “takes us beyond what we have today, which is a remedial EOBR rule that applies a requirement for EOBRs to carriers who have a higher violation rate in their hours-of-service noncompliance and driver-log noncompliance.”

FMCSA sent its EOBR proposal to OMB on Nov. 29.

The new proposal “is combined with a supporting-documents rule because the two go hand in hand in terms of what technology does and what kind of record keeping is required,” she said.

The supporting-documents rule outlines paperwork that truckers are required to retain to back up driver logs.

Ferro added that while finishing work on the combined EOBR-supporting documents rule by the end of the year “was already our goal,” a lawsuit brought by American Trucking Associations to force publication of a supporting documents rule “underscored the importance of our goal.”

A third rule Ferro said she expects to be published in the next four weeks is the second in a series of distracted-driving regulations.

“We put in place, in less than a year, a rule that bans texting by commercial vehicle operators that took effect Oct. 27,” she said, “and we do have a proposed rule at OMB that would restrict the use of cell phones by commercial vehicle operators.”

The cell-phone rule, Ferro said, is expected to be out “by the end of December.”

She said all the agency’s proposed rules will lead to safer highways.

“The concept behind these rules is that we’ve got to be sure that folks operating these vehicles are physically able to do the work, that they have both hands on the wheel and they’ve got their eyes on the road,” Ferro said. “These are pretty simple concepts, and it really underscores what we’re trying to do in the context of ensuring that folks on our highways are maintaining high safety standards.”