The head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Ray Martinez, told Congressional lawmakers last week that the electronic logging device mandate could be a catalyst for hours of service reforms, saying the mandate could shine a light on areas of hours regs where greater flexibility is needed.
“A great first step has been these electronic logging devices, because now it makes everybody on a level playing field. We all know — we have to admit — paper logs were fudged in the past. [ELDs] are less susceptible to that,” he said. “Now let’s look at hours of service and see whether some modifications — not extending the hours — but providing some flexibility in the current rules. We are engaging with our stakeholders in the regulated community and safety advocates to see what would be acceptable.”
He didn’t provide specifics as to what changes, if any, the agency is considering to hours of service regs. He only noted, as he has in recent months, that the agency is exploring the idea and gathering input from carriers, drivers and others.
Martinez, who assumed the FMCSA Administrator job in late February, testified for more than two hours before the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday, May 22, where he discussed a wide range of issues, including ELD and hours, sleep apnea screening, the attempted hack of the agency’s medical examiner registry, the Compliance Safety Accountability program and detention time.
Relative to detention, Martinez called excessive detention “an abuse of the driver,” noting its a safety issue that FMCSA has yet to figure out how to regulate. However, like with hours, he sees ELDs as a potential mechanism to addressing the issue. “In an odd way, electronic logging devices may provide some ray of light here. Not for FMCSA, but for the industry, to gather industry-wide information to see how widespread is this problem,” he says. “If they (carriers) were to voluntarily provide that information to FMCSA, we would be happy to review it,” he says of shippers and receivers who detain truck operators for five and six hours.
Regarding the agency’s National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners, which has been down since December, Martinez said it’s still “a matter of months” before full functionality returns. Reiterating information provided to Overdrive last month, Martinez said an attempt was made by a hacker to access the system, prompting the agency to pull it offline and address security vulnerabilities.
“Somebody attempted to get in the front door,” he said. “They got in through the screen door, but they did not get into the system itself. They were not able to access any personally identifiable information. There’s an active community of hackers out there, and I don’t know what they’re going for. But personally identifiable information is a target.”
