The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said commercial drivers using electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) complete their required record of duty status for hours of service (HOS) more than twice as fast as when using the traditional paper form.
This equates to an estimated 172 million “burden” hours spent by motor carriers each year, according to the FMCSA, which is seeking an extended public comment period through Sept. 12 on how motor carriers are complying with HOS rules. As of this report, FMCSA said in the Federal Register that it had received only one comment from its original notice of information collection originally published on June 6.
The paper version of HOS compliance is often referred to as RODS, or record of duty status, which in actuality describe both paper and electronic forms. The paper RODS remain an option for motor carriers to gauge compliance with driver hours. The regulations mostly affect commercial truck drivers, but a limited number of school bus drivers who work for private school bus contractors that engage in interstate travel, usually on charter trips, must also comply.
FMCSA promulgated the EOBR rules to target specific truck and bus companies involved in crashes as a result of fatigued drivers and, last summer, authorized the use of EOBRs to simplify the process. But the equipment similar to an airplane “black box” comes at a premium. Price is one reason why NSTA objects to EOBRs for private school bus companies. Another reason is, it says, there have been no student fatalities in FMCSA-regulated school buses in the past two decades, and there is no record of driver fatigue being the specific cause of any crash.
“When one reviews statistics regarding the school bus sector, HOS violations are rare or non-existent,” wrote David Hobson, NSTA’s executive director, in a May 23, 2011 comment to the docket. “The school bus industry’s safety record is exemplary and additional monitoring or enforcement will not improve student passenger safety. This means there is no effective safety benefit to be gained from installing EOBRs in school buses.”
Hobson added that FMCSA should retain its current exemption for school buses under 49 U.S.C. 395.8 that exempts school bus drivers from completing RODS because most school buses operate within a “short-haul,” 100-mile radius.
FMCSA withdrew a proposal in March 2004 that would have extended the applicability of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to all interstate, non-regular route school transportation operations because the agency estimated that only about 1 percent of private school buses would be affected. An NSTA survey of members found that only 4 percent of school bus trips could be classified as interstate or intrastate activity trips, but “the vast majority” fall within the short-haul exemption.
