FMCSA grants five-year extension to company using pulsating brake lamps

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is renewing an exemption that allows a hazardous material hauler to equip its trailers with pulsating brake lamps.

On Wednesday, Nov. 20, FMCSA announced it would be extending the exemption granted to Groendyke Transport Inc. that permits the company to install and use “an amber brake-activated pulsating lamp on the rear of its trailers in addition to the steady-burning brake lamps required by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.”

According to FMCSA, the exemption was extended because the agency believed allowing the Kansas City, Kan.-based carrier of flammable fuel and liquid hazardous materials to install the additional pulsating brake lamps “is likely to achieve a level of safety equivalent to or greater than the level of safety that would be achieved absent the exemption.”

Groendyke was provisionally granted a six-month extension in June, at which point a 30-day public comment period opened. After the agency received no comments regarding the request, the company was granted a five-year extension effective April 26, 2024 through April 26, 2029.

During the exemption period, the company is required to submit a yearly report to FMCSA containing information on rear-impact crashes involving Groendyke’s trailers equipped with the pulsating lamps. According to FMCSA, those reports are to include:

• Crash rates
• Vehicle miles traveled
• Number and type of CMVs operating under the exemption
• Crash or incident information including the date of each crash or incident, along with the time, location and a brief description of the event
• Any available information indicating malfunction of, or confusion caused by the use of, the amber brake-activated pulsating lamps

FMCSA said the exemption applied exclusively to commercial motor vehicles operated by Groendyke Transport Inc. and does not extend to any other motor carrier.

Greondyke’s use of pulsating brake lamps

The company initially began using pulsating lamps as part of an internal experiment to figure out what could be done to prevent other drivers from rear-ending its trailers. Officials believed that increasing visibility of the trailers “would be an efficient means to prevent rear-end accidents” and started looking for solutions that would “capture the attention of other drivers faster and more completely.”

In 2015, without FMCSA authorization, the company began installing pulsating brake lamps – in addition to the steady-burning ones required by federal regulations – on some of its trailers. The intention of this was to monitor and compare the frequency of rear-end collisions on the trailers equipped with pulsating lights and those without. Two years later, the company had equipped 632 of its 1,440 trailers with pulsating brake lamps.

According to data collected by Groendyke between January 2015 and July 2017, the frequency of rear-end collisions for trailers equipped with pulsating brake lamps had decreased by 33.7%. Additionally, the company found that none of the trailers equipped with the pulsating lamps had been involved in a rear-end crash at a railroad crossing over that span.

Using data collected from its own private analysis, along with several other studies conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the company filed for an official exemption in July 2018.

“The frequency of rear-end collisions is markedly lower when trailers are outfitted with pulsating brake lamps in addition to the steady-burning lamps required by the FMCSRs,” the company said in its application for exemption. “The pulsating brake lamps draw other drivers’ attention to what is happening with the vehicle in front more effectively and more quickly than steady-burning lamps.”

In April 2019, Groendyke was granted a five-year exemption, allowing it to equip its entire fleet of trailers with pulsating brake lights. LL