U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., today withdrew an amendment that would have mandated the use of electronic on-board recorders on all commercial vehicles.


Lautenberg had planned to add the amendment to a bus safety bill during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee mark-up the bill. However, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, backer of the motorcoach safety bill, does not want to complicate the bus safety bill with truck safety issues.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association obtained a copy of the amendment and was planning to launch a lobbying effort to get the committee to reject the amendment language.

You can bet that this won't be the last you'll see of Lautenberg and electronic logs.

During testimony in the confirmation hearing of Anne Ferro to become FMCSA administrator in September, Lautenberg stated that "Electronic On-Board Recorders, or EOBRs, should be used on every large truck to make sure we have accurate data on the amount of time an operator has been driving."

For more on electronic logs, see the December issue of Heavy Duty Trucking magazine.