Five years ago, Congress passed the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act of 2012, which ordered the Secretary of Transportation to regulate commercial motor vehicles by requiring most of them to be equipped with electronic logging devices (“ELDs”) for purposes of improving compliance with hours-of-service regulations. 49 U.S.C. § 31137(a)(1).
Jennifer Parrott’s and Melody Kiella’s article has been featured in the DRI Trucking Law Committee Newsletter on October 26, 2017.
Five years ago, Congress passed the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act of 2012, which ordered the Secretary of Transportation to regulate commercial motor vehicles by requiring most of them to be equipped with electronic logging devices (“ELDs”) for purposes of improving compliance with hours-of-service regulations. 49 U.S.C. § 31137(a)(1). To comply with the statutory mandate, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”) issued its final ELD mandate in 2015 requiring certain commercial vehicles to be equipped with ELDs (the “ELD mandate”). (See Electronic Logging Devices and Hours of Service Supporting Documents, 80 Fed. Reg. 78,292 [Dec. 16, 2015]). Controversy has surrounded the ELD mandate since its inception, including multiple challenges to the mandate by various groups within the trucking industry and the introduction of a bill seeking to delay the implementation of the ELD mandate by another two years. (ELD Extension Act of 2017, H.R. 3282, 115th Congress [2017-2018]; Bill Sullivan, ATA Opposes Efforts to Delay ELD Deadline, http://www.trucking.org/article/ATA-Opposes-Efforts-to-Delay-ELD-Deadline [Aug. 31, 2017]; OOIDA Files ELD Enforcement Petition With FMCSA, http://fleetowner.com/regulations/ooida-files-eld-enforcement-petition-fmcsa [Aug. 31, 2017]). While the controversy and debate surrounding the ELD mandate is not likely to go away any time soon, there is no doubt that use of ELDs throughout the trucking industry will change both the industry and the way that trucking claims are litigated.