FMCSA

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is proposing to ease its standards for granting exemptions to driver vision requirements.

Short-haul drivers who find that they unexpectedly exceed their daily limits can get relief from enforcement of the 30-minute break requirement.

Intelligent highways, smart vehicles, connected transportation systems – sounds like the stuff of the future. In reality, though, many technologies currently found on our roadways reflect that future. In many cases they will be integral components of an intelligent transportation system. And the most important piece of technology might be the one most everyone now carries in their pocket, purse or backpack.

Truckload carriers are raising their rates to cover increased costs from the new hours-of service rule, but not enough to keep up with the estimated loss of productivity, says Mark Montague of DAT, the load matching and analytic services company.

Governors of two states has issued emergency declarations, waiving federal hours of service regulations, for some truckers due to cold weather.

The FMCSA has revoked the operating authority of 8,180 brokers since Dec. 2, the date the federal agency began revoking authority from brokers without a $75,000 bond.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will consider additional applications for exemptions from the federal hearing standard prohibiting deaf truck drivers from interstate operations. The first 40 such individuals to receive these exemptions were approved in February.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is moving to fix a longtime problem in its CSA safety enforcement system. The agency is asking for comments on a plan to start including in its CSA database the results of court rulings on carrier challenges of roadside inspection citations.

The Association of Independent Property Brokers & Agents lost a challenge on Tuesday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to delay enforcement of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s new broker bond requirement that takes full effect on Dec. 1.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Moving Fraud Task Force has shut down five household goods moving companies in Florida, South Carolina and Maryland for holding customer shipments hostage and failing to turn over records related to their investigations.

The subject at Thursday’s House hearing was truck driver hours-of-service regulations, but the target was federal regulation of business. Anne Ferro, chief of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, testified that the 34-hour restart provision of the rule will save an estimated 19 lives a year.

A recent Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration report shows that motor carriers using the agency’s Pre-Employment Screening Program are seeing a greater decline in crash rates than those who are not using it.

The stage is set for a political grilling of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration at a House hearing Thursday on the hours-of-service rule. Amid relentless criticism of the 34-hour restart and 30-minute break provisions of the rule, agency administrator Anne Ferro will be called on to explain and defend the agency’s decision-making.

The American Transportation Research Institute on Monday released the findings of its latest analysis of the operational and economic impacts resulting from the new hours-of-service rules that went into effect July 1.