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2007 SORROW TO STRENGTH PRESS CONFERENCE

STRONG SAFETY NEED FOR EOBRs – WEAK PROPOSAL FROM FMCSA

* Fatigue and sleep deprivation leading to big truck crashes are worldwide safety problems that have led many nations to protect drivers from being overworked by electronically recording their driving hours.

* Many studies and surveys have shown that truck drivers will violate HOS limits on driving and working time, and illegally reduce their off-duty rest time, no matter how high the limits are set for working and driving hours per day or per week.

* These same studies and surveys have shown that between 30 percent and 56 percent of truck drivers regularly exceed HOS limits and falsify their paper logbooks recording their duty status. HOS violations and logbook falsification have been at epidemic levels for decades.

* Mandatory On-Board Recorders in big trucks to measure the driving time of commercial drivers are currently required in all European Union countries, Morocco, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Israel, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and are under consideration in Australia because of the very high rate of fatigued truck driver crashes.

* FMCSA has resisted requiring Electronic On-Board Recorders (EOBRs) for many years until forced by Congress and the federal courts to address the issue of commercial drivers in the U.S. who regularly exceed the driving time limits of federal hours of service regulations and then falsify their paper logbooks to conceal violations.

* The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has proposed a regulation for EOBRs that will require them on as few as 465 motor carriers each year of the more than 700,000 motor carriers registered with FMCSA for interstate commerce. That amounts to between six one-hundreds of one percent (0.06%) and seven one-hundreds of one percent (0.07%) of registered motor carriers. The rest of the motor carriers – more than 700,000 – can continue to use paper logbooks if they choose.

* Carriers required to have EOBRs would have to have a sample of paper logbooks show more than 10 percent of the drivers in violation of hours of service (HOS) requirements in a safety management Compliance Review (CR), twice within a span of two years. But these same, few motor carriers required to use EOBRs could remove them after only two years of use.

* However, the agency only conducts between 7,000 and 10,000 CRs each year, between one percent (1.0%) and one and four-tenths percent (1.4%) of all registered motor carriers. Therefore, the chances of being detected through a CR for HOS violations are extremely low.

* The agency is requiring no specific security controls on driver access to and exchange of even handheld cell phones as one version of an EOBR, will not certify the manufacturers supplying EOBRs, will not oversee and test any EOBRs, and will not certify repair and recalibration facilities.

* As an inducement to installing EOBRs, FMCSA has asked for support for potentially eliminating supporting paper documents for all time spent driving, eliminating some HOS federal regulation requirements, allowing “flexibility” for drivers using their sleeper berths to get enough rest, and excusing motor carriers with EOBRs to undergo any CRs for HOS compliance.

* It is clear that FMCSA is not serious about reducing HOS violations, reducing logbook falsification, reducing truck driver fatigue, and reducing the severe health impacts of very long, illegal truck driver working and driving hours and cheating on their rest and sleep time.