The American Trucking Associations, along with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and AAA, released a video urging members of Congress to support an electronic onboard recorder mandate for large trucks to improve driver and carrier compliance with hours of service rules.
“This collaboration and coming together of the trucking industry, the law enforcement community, and the motoring public around a single issue underscores the importance of this proposal,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said. “We hope that Congress won’t miss this opportunity to do something that will have a measurable, and positive, impact on the safety of our highways.”
“There’s a definite linkage between problem actors, and future crash involvement,” said CVSA Executive Director Steve Keppler in the video here.
The video also features Steve Rush, founder and president of Carbon Express Inc, Wharton NJ, a former owner-operator with experience with the weaknesses of paper logs. “I'm a reformed cheater... I made money doing that…” Rush said. “We need these electronic logs for sure.”
By including a requirement for EOBRs, Chris Plaushin, director federal relations AAA, said that “Congress has an important opportunity to help make the road safer.”
The video also pushed back on some common myths that opponents of the requirement have namely privacy and cost. Keppler said that privacy was a “non-issue,” since an EOBR is simply collecting information that’s already required. “It's just converting it from paper to electronic,” he said.
Graves addressed cost concerns by pointing out that “an EOBR costs less than a couple tires on an 18-wheeler. And the costs keep coming down.”