FMCSA’s Hutcheson talks speed limiters on Land Line Now

Although a recent report targets June for the next step toward a speed limiter mandate in the trucking industry, FMCSA Administrator Robin Hutcheson said the agency has “a lot of work to do before any decisions are made.”

In an interview with LandLine.Media, Hutcheson took time to discuss the controversial speed limiter proposal, as well as several other top trucking issues.

In May, FMCSA issued a supplemental advance notice of proposed rulemaking to get feedback on a potential mandate. Under the initial proposal, commercial motor vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of 26,001 pounds or more and that are equipped with an electronic engine control unit capable of being governed would be subject to the mandate.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest report on significant rulemakings projects that a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking will be published in the Federal Register by June 30.

However, Hutcheson noted that the date is just an estimate as the first notice garnered about 15,000 comments, and those must be reviewed.

“It’s our anticipated schedule for the regulatory activity,” Hutcheson said. “Being that it’s an estimate. Being that we have 14,500 comments or a little more coming back and we have a lot of analysis to do … We evaluate costs, safety benefits and regulatory options. Speed is something we’ll need to have careful analysis of to set. So we have a lot of work to do before any decisions are made. We anticipate announcing decisions in 2023 about our next steps on it. We know we have a lot of technical work to do. We want to be transparent and get folks through the process, but I don’t have a date I can give you on when this will be finally finished.”

No doubt, there’s plenty of work ahead before the agency could actually put any sort of speed limiter mandate into effect. In addition to the comment review and analysis, FMCSA still has not determined a top-end speed. Once that is done and a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking is ready to be published, another comment period and analysis will need to be completed.

Not a new idea

The debate over whether speed limiters should be required on commercial motor vehicles has been around for decades. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a report titled “Commercial Motor Vehicle Speed Control Devices” in 1991.

In 2006, the American Trucking Associations petitioned NHTSA to initiate a rulemaking to require vehicle manufacturers to limit the speed of trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating greater than 26,000 pounds to no more than 68 mph.

FMCSA and NHTSA issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking in late 2016, but the rulemaking was shelved after a new administration took office in 2017.

Given that history, Hutcheson said she was not surprised by the amount of opposition from truck drivers.

“We were not surprised to see that many comments,” she said. “This is not the first time this has been discussed, so we knew there were going to be a lot of comments. The purpose of the supplemental (advance) notice of proposed rulemaking was to listen and to learn. And there’s a lot to listen to and there’s a lot to learn. We really appreciate the comments coming in. We are hard at work reviewing all of the comments.”

As part of May’s notice, FMCSA said it envisioned a speed limiter mandate as a “commonsense approach to reducing crashes and saving lives.” The agency also cited a 2019 statistic that there were nearly 900 fatal crashes in areas with posted speed limits over 70 mph.

“The genesis is safety,” Hutcheson said. “There’s a correlation between speed and crashes and more specifically between speed and how often someone dies. There were 5,000 crashes involving commercial motor vehicles. There were 800 drivers who died last year. So every tool, everything we can do to improve safety on the roadways is on our mind.”

Opposition

Of the 15,000 comments filed, a significant majority opposed the idea of forcing commercial motor vehicles to drive – in many instances – well below the posted speed limit.

Truck drivers say it would be another example of overregulation and point to problems with speed differentials and road rage incidents that would result from drivers of passenger vehicles being stuck behind slow-moving tractor-trailers.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association filed comments in opposition to a speed limiter mandate in July.

“Professional truck drivers strongly object to any speed limiter mandate for several other reasons based on their own experiences,” OOIDA wrote in comments signed by President Todd Spencer. “Speed limiters take control of the truck away from drivers, denying them the ability to use the truck’s capabilities to avoid accidents and unsafe road and traffic conditions. Speed limiters increase driver stress and make drivers more fatigued because in order to complete the schedule expected of them they must operate additional hours under the hours-of-service rules.”

More from Hutcheson

Listen to Administrator Hutcheson’s entire interview on Friday’s episode of Land Line Now. In addition to speed limiters, she discusses such topics as hours-of-service flexibility, broker transparency, ELDs and truck parking. LL