On August 26, 2011 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago vacated the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) final rule on electronic on-board recorders (EOBR) for commercial motor vehicle driver hours of service compliance. Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, Inc. v. FMCSA, No. 10-2340. The final rule, published on April 5, 2010, was scheduled to go into effect on June 4, 2012, and would have required any motor carrier that was found in a safety review to have more than 10 percent of its drivers’ logs out of compliance to outfit its vehicles with EOBRs for HOS compliance for a period of 2 years.
The appeals court held that in developing the rule the FMCSA failed to consider a statutory requirement that any regulation about the use of monitoring devices in commercial vehicles must “ensure that the devices are not used to harass vehicle operators.” 49 U.S.C. § 31137(a). The court noted that “[t]o provide an adequate explanation under section 31137(a), the Agency should have revealed how it drew the line between legitimate measures designed to assure productivity and forbidden measures that harass.” Finding that the FMCSA did not provide such an explanation, the court vacated the final rule and remanded the matter back to the FMCSA.
This ruling affects not only the April 5, 2010 final rule but will most likely require the FMCSA to revise its related final rule, currently under development, that would mandate all commercial motor vehicle operators to employ EOBRs. According to the DOT list of significant rulemakings, that draft final rule is currently scheduled to be sent to the Office of the Secretary of Transportation for review in February 2012.
