ELD report touts compliance, lacks safety data

Since the electronic logging mandate went into effect in 2017, compliance with the federal hours-of-service regulations has improved.

However, it is not clear that the increase in compliance equated to improved highway safety.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently provided an ELD Oversight Report to Congress. According to the report, only 0.77% of driver inspections yielded at least one hours-of-service violation in December 2021. That’s a significant decrease compared to December 2017, when 1.19% of inspections found violations.

“Increased compliance with the hours-of-service rules reduces the risks of fatigue-related crashes attributable, in whole or in part, to patterns of violations of the hours-of-service rules,” FMCSA wrote in the report.

But have ELDs actually improved safety?

FMCSA’s report won’t go that far, blaming the lack of a clear answer on unexpected variables, such as the pandemic.

“Since the full implementation of the ELD rule, multiple events have occurred that have impacted the use of ELDs, safety and hours-of-service enforcement,” FMCSA wrote in the report. “Such factors include the September 2020 implementation of new hours-of-service regulations, hours-of-service exemptions issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of FMCSA’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse. These confounding factors have increased the challenges relating to any further analysis of the ELD mandate, making it difficult to tease out their individual safety impacts.”

Based on the number of crashes in recent years, it would be difficult to argue that ELDs have made any significant improvements to highway safety.

According to the most recent statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, overall traffic fatalities decreased slightly in 2022 but are still up considerably since 2017. NHTSA’s stats show that 42,795 people were killed in vehicle crashes in 2022. That is a 0.3% decrease from 2021’s traffic deaths data, which shows 42,939 people were killed. However, the number of fatal crashes have surged since 2017, when there were 37,473 traffic deaths.

The number of fatal crashes involving large trucks or buses remained steady when comparing the 2017 numbers to 2020 – the most recent year shown in FMCSA’s Large Truck and Bus Facts. In 2017, there were 4,587 large truck or bus fatal crashes, while there were 4,588 in 2020.

OOIDA points out lack of safety evidence for ELDs

In November, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association told the agency that there has been no evidence that ELDs have improved safety.

“Our members have vigorously opposed the ELD mandate since its inception,” OOIDA wrote in comments signed by President Todd Spencer. “There was never sufficient research indicating the mandate would improve highway safety, and the agency still lacks data demonstrating any positive safety results since its full implementation.” LL