FMCSA Defends ELD Rule in Appeals Court Filing
In a brief filed with a federal appeals court, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration defended a legal challenge to the agency’s electronic logging device rule by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
The 60-page FMCSA brief was filed June 15 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. It was a response to an OOIDA claim filed with the appeals court on March 29 alleging that the ELDs mandate for commercial vehicles “does not advance safety, is arbitrary and capricious and violates Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
FMCSA said it could refute every claim made by OOIDA.
“A driver who drives over hours currently can falsify any one of a number of entries on the Record of Duty Status to make it appear that the driver is in compliance,” the FMCSA response said. “The electronic logging device would provide certain pieces of driver unalterable data, which would complicate the process of falsifying driving hours.”
FMCSA called the agency’s adoption of the ELD rule a “common sense” reinforcement of a congressional ELD mandate.
“Automatic, tamper-proof recording of driving data, location, engine hours and other information decreases the likelihood that driving time can be concealed or status information changed after the fact,” the agency said in its response brief.
The ELD rule, unveiled Dec. 10, details new technical specifications for ELDs and supporting documents, and requires all interstate carriers to comply by Dec. 17, 2017.
However, OOIDA said the agency provided no proof of its claims that the mandate would improve highway safety.
“They didn’t even attempt to compare the safety records of trucking companies that use ELDs and those that do not,” OOIDA President Jim Johnson said in a recent statement. “There is simply no proof that the costs, burdens and privacy infringements associated with this mandate are justified.”
But based on the agency’s calculations, FMCSA estimated that the greater hours-of-service compliance achieved through ELDs would result in 1844 fewer crashes, 26 lives saved, and 562 injuries avoided annually.
FMCSA also said it adopted several technical provisions to guard against driver harassment.
