Heavy Duty Trucking, January 2018

WASHINGTON WATCH HDT JANUARY 2018 14 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM TRALA scores 90 Day ELD waiver for short term rentals Several members of Congress have proposed a bill to require impact guards on the sides and front of trucks to product passenger vehicles from being crushed underneath in a collision The Stop Underrides Act of 2017 was introduced last month by Sen Kirsten Gillibrand D NY It was co sponsored by Sen Marco Rubio R FL and Rep Steve Cohen D TN In addition to requiring side and front guards the Stop Underrides Act would also update and improve rear underride guard requirements Bill would require front and side impact guards Testing earlier this year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that side impact guards on truck trailers demonstrated potentially lifesaving benefits in side impact collisions The tests were accompanied by video showing the roof of a car being sheared off in a collision at 35 mph decapitating the test dummy Another car at the same speed was shown hitting a trailer with the underride guard and bouncing off of it with only damage to the front of the vehicle Steven Martinez At press time it was expected that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would soon issue a 90 day waiver from the electronic logging device mandate for carriers operating short term rental trucks defined as 30 days or less The action gives firms that rent trucks until March 18 2018 to get their trucks in compliance with the ELD mandate The Truck Renting and Leasing Association announced on Dec 12 less than a week before the ELD rule took effect on Dec 18 that FMCSA had agreed to grant the special 90 day exemption In a Dec 8 letter to the association Deputy Administrator Cathy Gautreaux explained that official notice of the waiver would be published in the Federal Register as soon as practicable and will include the complete list of terms and conditions applicable to the waiver In a statement TRALA called the agencys action welcome news to truck rental companies that have been spending the past few months trying to put together strategies and plans to address the fact that FMCSA only granted part of TRALAs original request for a five year exemption for short term rental trucks In late October FMCSA granted a waiver only for rentals of eight days or less rather than the 30 day period sought by TRALA The association said that left most of its members with very little time to respond to ensure their customers continued to receive the best possible equipment and service designed to comply with the ELD rule In the wake of that earlier decision TRALA said it continued to discuss further options with FMCSA to help ease the burden on the rental industry as TRALA members worked toward becoming fully compliant with the mandate After multiple calls and face to face discussions TRALA requested a 90 day waiver which the FMCSA has the ability to grant without a public comment period TRALA also pointed out that many of the issues around the mandate that are unique to its members stem from the fact that ELD platforms are not interoperable among themselves If a fleet has one ELD system but the rental company has another it is impossible to combine them without building out new systems which are both costly and time consuming As technology stands today for small businesses the interoperability issue could cause a financial hardship and for fleets it could cost significant time for drivers to manually combine their hours of service data from two different ELD systems David Cullen FMCSA to study excessive commuting by truckers The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is proposing to survey excessive commuting by truck drivers The agency is defining as excessive any commute to work that exceeds 150 minutes The survey would focus on the prevalence of such commuting in a commercial motor vehicle the number and percentage of CMV drivers who commute the distances they travel and the time zones they cross the impact of such commuting on safety and fatigue and existing commuting policies of motor carriers In its notice on the survey published in the Federal Register Nov 27 the agency said it is inquiring about trucker commuting practices to fulfill Section 5515 of the Fixing Americas Surface Transportation FAST Act That section of the 2015 highway bill requires FMCSA to conduct a study on the safety effects of commutes by motor carrier operators that exceed 150 minutes The FMCSA administrator is then required to submit a report to Congress on the findings of the study Providing some background context FMCSA stated that in the past two decades as the number of workers has increased and the distance to affordable housing has also increased in most metropolitan areas commuting times have increased in the United States The agency went on to say that long commuting times can adversely affect CMV drivers in multiple ways including Compromising off duty time Long commuting times can reduce a drivers available off duty time for sleep and personal activities This can lead to excessive fatigue while on duty creating safety concerns for both the CMV driver and other drivers on the roads Impacting driver health A recent study was conducted that monitored 4297 adults from 12 metropolitan Texas counties In this region 90 of people commute to work The study found that the drivers who have long commuting times were more likely to have poor cardiovascular health and be less physically fit This study showed that people who commute long distances to work weigh more are less physically active and have higher blood pressure Although it is not mentioned in the FMCSA notice it is generally understood that the FAST Act provision calling for the survey was written in response to circumstances related to the June 2014 crash of a Walmart truck into a limo van that killed comedian James McNair and seriously injured comedian Tracy Morgan A subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the truck drivers fatigue played a role in the accident At the time of the crash Walmart driver Kevin Roper was on hour 13 of a 14 hour shift but he had driven for 12 hours from his home in Georgia to Delaware to start his route David Cullen