Profile: millise1
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The fact that some drivers have grown to appreciate some of the benefits EOBRs have to offer has nothing to do with whether or not they should be mandated in every truck.
Every driver in the country could absolutely love them, and that still would not be reason enough to require them to be installed in every truck.
Personally, I am opposed to any mandate, but can see the benefits for requiring the carriers with a long history of HOS violations to use EOBRs. Outside of that, the choice of whether or not to equip a truck with an EOBR should belong to the carrier or truck owner.
Again, I have no personal experience using an EOBR since I am not a truck driver. Anecdotally, I can say that the majority of HOS violations are not due to driving more than ten or eleven hours per day. Rather, the… more »
Another bigh cause of logbook falsification is to allow a driver a break that would not be doable under the regulations while still allowing the driver to meet any deadlines.
EOBRs would be effective against this type of falsification. However, I’m pretty sure I would rather they weren’t. If a driver is feeling ill, wants to avoid the stress of rush-hour traffic, or simply has an off day and needs a rest break, the EOBR will be there telling them that they’d better keep moving if they want to meet their appointment time.
I’ll take the driver who chooses to take the break and fudge the book anyday over a driver with the same deadline pushing through while remaining perfectly compliant.
Again, I cannot stress enough that the FMCSA cannot have it both ways. The reasoning behind revisiting the HOS yet again is that they cannot be conclusively proven to increase highway safety. Therefore, increasing compliance with those HOS CANNOT be for the purpose of improving safety.
Even if they could conclusively prove a correlation, fatigue-related truck accidents make up only a small percentage of truck-involved accidents. Nothing about a sweeping mandate of EOBR technology makes any sense. « less
The option that would best serve the short haul industry [in my opinion] would be to define thresholds, 2 or more out of 7 days on the road would be reasonable. That threshold would remove landscapers, farmers, septic system businesses, carpenters and other typical small businesses using trucks over 10,000 lbs but less than 26,000 lbs from the costly burden of EBOR requirements.
As a safety consultant/educator I am in contact with many small business operators using small CMV’s. Many of these operations use a CMV to transport their goods 5 or less times a month. It simply is unreasonable to make a universal mandate that would include a small business using a truck 5 times a month or one who travels within less than a 100 mile radius. Limiting the scope of the carrier type required to use the EBOR would make the most sense.