In an effort to make America’s roads safer and provide accurate information after an accident, commercial truck drivers will soon be required to install electronic logging devices which keep track of their speed, hours of service and other critical information.
“This is a win for all motorists on our nation’s roadways,” Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Administrator T. F. Scott Darling III said in a FMCSA statement announcing the new regulations. “Employing technology to ensure that commercial drivers comply with federal hours-of-service rules will prevent crashes and save lives.”
Under the new rules, trucking companies have until December 2017 to install ELDs in every new commercial truck, according to a recent news article published in The Virginian Pilot. Many existing trucks already use older automatic on-board recording devices (AOBRD), according to the FMCSA. These older devices are “grandfathered” for a limited time, but carriers will be required to replace them with ELDs compliant with the new regulations by December 2019.