There’s an iPhone commercial that depicts a user’s information – emails, contacts, purchases, etc. – being sold at auction to high bidders. Bob Trent, vice president of communications at PrePass Safety Alliance, used this commercial as an analogy to explain how valuable drivers’ personally identifiable information and carriers’ data can be.
That information could be made available to state agencies and any potential bad actors should the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration enforce the use of a unique identification device (UID) or Level VIII inspections. Both UID and Level VIII facilitate wireless roadside inspections, electronically or wirelessly transmitting information while the vehicle is in motion.
And, so far, both have caused more questions to be raised than answered, Trent said in a recent PrePass webinar titled Preparing for the Arrival of Electronic Truck Inspections. The webinar addressed how new inspection technologies could affect carrier operations and what information carriers and their drivers may be required to transmit to inspectors.
“There are just a large number of pertinent questions that have yet to be answered in order to reach a decision for or against moving forward in these areas,” Trent said.
The FMCSA issued a UID Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) in September 2022, and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance met recently in March for its Level VIII Inspection Forum to discuss how the input from the UID ANPRM could reflect into that.
The FMCSA declined CVSA’s petition for a rulemaking on UID in the 2010s because of lack of clarity around the cost of implementation – outfitting trucks with the devices and establishing a system for transportation agencies to use. Proponents of UID say implementing the concept would save carriers time and money by speeding up the inspection process and reducing the amount of stops for professional drivers. But the ones behind the wheel feel it’s too intrusive.
“(CCJ parent company) Randall Reilly did a survey last summer, and it came back as 27% of respondents in the trucking industry would leave the industry if UID as it seemed to be described in that ANPRM became law,” Trent said. They feel that “the regulation has reached a point where it is so intrusive that I am going to go do something else. I'm not comfortable with that.”
