Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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LEADING NEWS, TRUCKING MARKET CONDITIONS AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS Truck passengers now required to wear seatbelts T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will require pas- sengers in property-carrying com- mercial vehicles to wear seatbelts while in operation on public roads. The agency's final rule "holds motor carriers and drivers responsible" for making sure passengers in their trucks wear seatbelts. Of the 17 commenters on the rule, 12 supported it. Those dissent - ing did not support the rule, didn't believe a rulemaking was necessary or didn't support drivers or carriers being held responsible. The agency responded that many states already hold drivers responsible for their passengers and that the rule is an extension of that. The rule doesn't require the use of sleeper berth restraints, and the National Transportation Safety Board commented that restraints should be required. FMCSA said it "has no information on the effec - tiveness of current sleeper berth restraints in reconciling crash pro- tection with fatigue prevention." The rule will take effect 60 days after its June 7 publication in the Federal Register. – Matt Cole FMCSA: 'Government supervision' of trucking justifies ELD mandate T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on June 15 filed its response to the lawsuit by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association against its 2015-issued electronic logging device mandate, defending its final rule against arguments challeng- ing its constitutionality and saying the mandate stands up to a cost- benefit analysis. The agency filed the 60-page document on the day it was due, a deadline set by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, the court overseeing the case. FMCSA says the rule will improve hours-of-service compliance, prevent 1,844 crashes a year and save 26 lives annually. The agency also contends the rule does not violate truckers' constitutional privacy rights, as OOIDA charges in its law- suit against the proposed mandate. Relative to ELDs' potential to infringe on truckers' privacy, FMCSA says that truck- ing has a "long tradition of close government supervision," citing the 1987 court deci- sion New York v. Burger. Drivers should have a lower privacy expectation while on the job because trucking is such a highly regulated industry, FMCSA argues. Given that ELDs are meant to track only hours-of-service compliance, they infringe on truckers' rights no more than keeping paper logs, the agency argues. The alleged infringement on drivers' 4th Amendment protections against ille- gal search and seizure – which OOIDA attributes to the tracking requirements spelled out in the ELD rule – is one of the association's principal arguments against the mandate that will require the majority of truck operators who cur- rently have to keep records of duty status to use an ELD by Dec. 18, 2017, to track hours compliance. OOIDA successfully challenged FMCSA's prior attempt to require ELDs, and the association's new lawsuit will be heard by the same court that overturned the agency's 2010-published ELD mandate. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a trucker's request to intervene in OOIDA's lawsuit, siding with the 7th Circuit Court's decision to bar William Trescott from the case. – James Jaillet Scan the QR code with your smartphone or visit ccjdigital.com/ news/subscribe-to- newsletters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newslet- ter filled with news, analysis, blogs and market condition articles. commercial carrier journal | july 2016 9 FMCSA's final rule 'holds motor carriers and drivers responsible' for making sure passengers in their trucks wear seatbelts. FMCSA says the rule will improve hours-of-service compliance, prevent 1,844 crashes a year and save 26 lives annually.