A year later, a preliminary study says the ELD mandate hasn’t improved safety

April marks one year since full enforcement began for the electronic logging mandate.

Advocates for the requirement said it would force truck drivers to follow the hours-of-service regulations, which would result in fewer crashes and an increase in overall safety. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association countered that increased compliance doesn’t equate to increased safety and that the mandate would create more harm than good.

It will be another year before complete crash statistics are available, but researchers from three major universities have already released a study on the effects of the mandate. They found the use of ELDs have not reduced crashes and may cause an increase in unsafe driving habits.

The OOIDA Foundation conducted a brief analysis of the study, which was released in January by researchers from Northeastern University, the University of Arkansas, and Michigan State University. The study is titled, “Did the Electronic Logging Device Mandate Reduce Accidents?”

“While the results from the study certainly show that ELDs have not improved safety, we must be careful with how some might interpret the results,” the OOIDA Foundation said in its analysis. “Safety advocates might use this study to push their case for speed limiters, even though the authors suggest that a change in hours-of-service regulations will help to improve safety.”

The 41-page study revealed that hours-of-service violations declined when the ELD mandate started light enforcement in December 2017 and fell further when stricter enforcement began in April 2018. However, the number of weekly truck crashes reported in the study went from 1,717 before the mandate to 1,912 during the light enforcement period and then to 1,703 after strict enforcement began.

While the number of hours-of-service violations dropped significantly, the number of crashes among owner-operators actually increased, the study said.

The study revealed many findings that would be of particular interest to small carriers and owner-operators. Many of the findings fall in line with some of the arguments against the mandate levied by truck drivers and OOIDA before ELDs became a requirement.

• Truck drivers were already motivated to avoid crashes before the ELD mandate went into effect. A crash can lead to significant physical, financial and emotional costs for a driver. For an owner-operator, it could mean the end of his or her business.
• Statistics don’t show a large number of crashes caused by fatigued drivers. Estimates range from 1.4 percent to less than 4 percent.
• Drivers have specific information that could be useful when deciding whether to drive, which inflexible regulations cannot take into account.
• The estimates for the effect of the policy shift is that crashes increased by between 2,290 and 3,266 per year.
• A more strict approach to the hours-of-service regulations may have led to an increase in unsafe driving behavior. The study said that unsafe driving violations by owner-operators increased by somewhere between 23.4 to 33.3 percent and speeding increased between 23 and 31 percent.
• Given the legal liabilities involved with being in a crash while working outside of the hours-of-service limits, truckers were already motivated to drive within the limits and were likely extra cautious when they drove past the hours-of-service limits.

The OOIDA Foundation analysis said the study had limitations and offered only preliminary results. Even with the limitations, the OOIDA Foundation said the study did a good job attempting to analyze the true effectiveness of ELDs by not only examining compliance but also reportable crashes.

“For years, FMCSA and others have only focused on compliance, but as we all know, compliance does not equal safety,” the analysis states. “With that in mind, the study demonstrates that while hours-of-service compliance is up for all carriers, crashes are increasing overall.” LL