Previously in this series: ELDs and highway safety: Crashes, injuries and fatalities rise post-mandate
Many commenters responding to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's recent requests related to electronic logging devices and the hours of service -- one exploring possible changes to the ELD mandate , and the other asking about carriers’ use of the now-expired COVID-19 emergency hours-of-service declaration -- emphasized problems with current regulations, including the ELD mandate.
Overdrive readers largely believe the degradation of highway safety illustrated in Part 1 of the story is due, at least in part, to ELDs, as shown in the following results from recent polling.
Among respondents who indicated the ELD mandate has had a negative impact on highway safety, some pointed to increased pressures faced by operators under the mandate.
Owner-operator John Highley was part of a group of operators who early on felt they saw the writing on the wall well before ELDs were mandated. The group tried to pull drivers together to prevent FMCSA from moving forward.
“We tried to get drivers on board, and completely failed with it,” he said. “Nobody thought that it would ever happen. By the time people started getting on board to fight the ELD mandate, it was already a done deal” -- Congressionally mandated in 2012, finalized with rulemaking in 2015, and nearing implementation in 2017.
