FMCSA Policy Implementation, Priorities Make News at ATA Conference
At this week’s American Trucking Associations conference in San Diego, ATA’s American Transportation Research Institute released its polling data on the top issues facing truckers, and FMCSA leadership outlined their regulatory priorities for the coming year. The annual top issues list was gleaned from the survey responses of 4,000 industry stakeholders. According to the results, the top five issues facing the North American trucking industry are the:
1) Challenges caused by the new Hours-of-Service rule
2) Growing driver shortage
3) Problems and data inconsistence in the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program at FMCSA
4) Retention of qualified and experienced drivers
5) Implementation of new rules on electronic logging devices (ELDs).
At the ATA Convention, FMCSA Chief Safety Officer Jack Van Steenberg laid out the top priorities for the agency in the upcoming year. Most notably, the agency is seeking to finalize its new rules on ELDs, to monitor driver compliance with the hours of service rules. FMCSA will also make an effort to finalize a new safety fitness determination using data from the CSA program, and move to modernize its inspection process. Finally, the FMCSA will attempt to implement a new, third phase for CSA to give agency investigators new software and tools for compliance reviews.
