OOIDA asks members to oppose electronic IDs

Saying the proposal sends up “red flags,” the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is asking its members to actively oppose efforts to mandate electronic identification technology on commercial motor vehicles.

OOIDA issued a Call to Action to its more than 150,000 members on Tuesday, Oct. 25.

“For an agency that has failed to ensure the safe and responsible deployment of other systems, such as electronic logging devices, it is unthinkable that they would mandate even more technology,” OOIDA wrote.

In September, FMCSA published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the possibility of requiring interstate commercial motor vehicles to have electronic IDs. No formal proposal has been made, but the public has through Nov. 22 to tell the agency if the requirement is a good idea.

OOIDA says it is not.

“The agency asserts these changes would allow law enforcement to target high-risk carriers, but we are skeptical of these claims and have a host of concerns about how this proposal would negatively affect truckers and highway safety,” the Association wrote. “This proposal sends up red flags about privacy, information security, enforcement fairness, cost to truckers and more.”

CVSA petition

The notice stems from a 2010 petition by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. At that time, CVSA asked FMCSA to mandate the technology “to help facilitate efficiency and efficacy in the roadside inspection program.”

FMCSA denied the petition in 2013 because of “the lack of information necessary to estimate the costs and benefits of an electronic identification mandate” to support a federal rulemaking.

Attempting to address the agency’s concerns. CVSA filed a petition for reconsideration in 2015. FMCSA accepted the second petition in November 2015 and said it would initiate a rulemaking.

Seven years later, the agency is considering moving forward with a mandate.

How to comment

OOIDA encourages its members to go the Fighting for Truckers website and submit comments to the agency.

Commenters are asked to provide feedback on functionality, populations affected, cost/benefits, and other areas of using electronic IDs. A full list of questions from FMCSA can be found in the notice.

To comment on the notice, click here or go to Regulations.gov and enter Document No. FMCSA-2022-0062.

More than 1,300 comments have already been submitted. Many come from truckers opposed to a broad mandate.

Louis Broussard Jr. said that if FMCSA is trying to target high-risk carriers, then that’s where they should look.

“Why require us safe drivers and owner-operators to incur this cost?” he wrote. “Just require ‘at-risk’ trucks to have the ID. Then they will be easy to identify.” LL