Transportation industry Trends: Electronic On-Board Recorders
Posted by Karen Thomas on Sun, Apr 25, 2010 @ 05:32 PM
New controls for habitual Hours of Service (HOS) violators. On April 10th, the U.S.Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a new rule that will require interstate commercial truck and bus companies with serious patterns of hours-of-service (HOS) violations to install electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) in all their vehicles. Nearly 5,700 interstate carriers will use EOBRs after the final rule's first year of implementation.
HOS violations result in greater on-road risks including fatigued drivers handling hundreds of thousands of pounds of cargo. Carriers and drivers are responsible for complying with HOSs regulations which means writing down hours driven and ensuring trucks are put into park when the time comes. Some carriers and drivers though operate big rigs beyond the HOS limits to save time, and ultimately money. The FMCSA though is relying on technology to curb violations for repeat offenders.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, "We are committed to cracking down on carriers and drivers who put people on our roads and highways at risk," (www.fmcsa.gov.)
The technology those certain carriers and drivers will have to place in their fleets are called electronic on-board recorders, or EOBRs. They automatically record the number of hours drivers spend operating a given vehicle. What deems a carrier or driver a chronic violator? The new rule will require that carriers found with 10 percent or more HOS violations during a compliance review will be required to install EOBRs in all their vehicles for a minimum of two years.
The EOBR rule is slated to go into effect June 1st of 2012.