The American Trucking Associations again called on Congress to support the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in its effort to implement the requirement for electronic logging devices on time next month.
“ATA is a strong defender of the Electronic Logging Device final rule,” Collin Stewart, president of Stewart Transport Inc., said on behalf of the ATA. “As a committed advocate for the safe and efficient transportation of freight over America’s highways, ATA believes ELDs will improve safety by ensuring strict compliance with hours-of-service requirements.”
The ELD rule is a bipartisan effort to improve safety, Stewart said. By improving compliance with the current hours-of-service rules, federal data shows that an ELD reduced the truck crash rate by 11.7% and reduced hours-of-service violations by 50% when compared to users of paper logs.
In his comments, Stewart also countered ELD opponents’ concerns about items like privacy and cost by noting the Courts have ruled in favor of the constitutionality of the ELD rule and pointing out that the cost of the ELD rule is simply the cost of compliance with the underlying hours-of-service.
“Opponents of the ELD rule claim that the use of ELDs will make them less safe by eliminating the flexibility they have by using paper logs. It is important to point out, as federal regulators have, that nothing in the ELD rule changes the current hours of service limits,” Stewart said. “Drivers who claim that ELDs remove their discretion in deciding when to take a break or when to drive either don’t understand how the current rules are structured or are willfully ignoring them.”
