The rule will in short, FMCSA says, improve hours of service compliance and prevent 1,844 crashes a year and save 26 lives annually. Moreover, the agency contends its rule does not violate truckers’ constitutional rights to privacy, as the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association charges in its lawsuit.
Relative to ELDs potential to infringe on truckers’ privacy, FMCSA argues that’s simply part of being a truck driver. Trucking has a “‘long tradition of close government supervision,’” the agency says, citing the 1987 court decision New York v. Burger. Truckers should have a lower expectation of privacy while on the job, FMCSA’s lawyers argue in the brief, because trucking is such a highly regulated industry.
Given that ELDs are meant to track only hours of service compliance, they infringe on truckers’ rights no more than keeping paper logs does, the agency argues in its court filing.
The alleged infringement on drivers’ 4th Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure — which OOIDA says is inevitable with the tracking requirements spelled out in the ELD mandate rule — is one of the association’s principal arguments against the ELD mandate.
All truck operators (with a few notable exceptions) who are required to keep records of duty status currently will be required to use an ELD under the mandate by December 18, 2017, to track hours compliance.
OOIDA’s challenge, however, intends to overturn the ELD requirement. The association successfully challenged the agency’s prior mandate. Its new lawsuit will be heard by the same court that ruled to overturn the agency’s 2010-published attempt at an electronic logging devices mandate.
