ELD Mandate Timeline of Events

ELD Mandate Timeline: The past & the foreseeable future
With a positive impact on more than 3 million commercial vehicle drivers, the ELD mandate will lead to more accurate hours of service recordings—speculated by FMCSA. Besides, the ELDs will save 26 lives & prevent about 562 injuries every year along with the estimated savings around $1 billion on paperwork.

As the trucking industry being introduced with the ELD rule it will be interesting to know the events in reaching this long-awaited decision.

1935
The seed was laid back in 1935 in The Motor Carrier Act. That act states that upon the discretion of the secretary of transportation, requirements may set for maximum HOS of employees and standards of motor carrier equipments.

1938
In a study, the US Public Health Service addressed that commercial truck drivers are prone to fatigue because of excessive hours of service. That study was backed by Interstate Commerce Commission & supported the need for regulatory limits of HOS.

1939
A year later the Interstate Commerce Commission created the first HOS regulations for commercial truck drivers.

1967
A new agency Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) was created to look after the issues regarding commercial vehicle drivers.

1984
The Motor Carrier Safety Act was enforced that year by virtue of which the secretary of transportation had the authority to regulate motor carriers, commercial drivers & vehicle equipments.

1988
In order to increase the compliance with HOS regulations by monitoring devices, the Truck and Bus Safety and Regulatory Reform Act was enforced. The act was later amended to make sure that those devices can’t be used maliciously to ‘harass a vehicle operator.’

2012
In that year, the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act was implemented. The act stated the regulations requiring commercial truck drivers to keep records of duty status (RODS) to be equipped with ELDs. That statute also includes the design standards & certification requirements of ELDs.

The device performance was also a major concern of that statute as the agency also considered the alternative way of keeping supporting documents with the drivers. However, it did not take away the HOS enforcement while capturing data by ELD.

2015
On December 10th, FMCSA released a 516 page long ELD mandate to improve the overall safety. FMCSA has made it mandatory to use the device in all commercial trucks while preparing HOS records of duty status.

2017
All truck drivers must install the device by November 30th. However, drivers who already have AOBRDs installed in their trucks have until November 30th, 2019 to upgrade their technology to ELD.

2019
This will be the last year for upgrade in technology. ALL drivers must be using ELDs – AOBRDs are no longer acceptable.

Source: http://www.freightquote.com/news/2016/02/the-eld-mandate/

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