The chief safety officer for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration,
Jack Van Steenberg, outlined the agency’s priorities for 2015 during a recent presentation. Van Steenberg spoke on behalf of the FMCSA at the American Trucking Association’s Management Conference & Exhibition, where he named the top five issues for next year.
• publication of a final rule to mandate electronic logging devices.
“We would love to see it get to the secretary’s office in the spring of 2015, and we would love to have a final rule sometime in 2015,” said Van Steenberg. “There is a lot to consider when it comes to the electronic devices. We want to get it right, and we want to get it right the first time.”
• The Unified Registration System. The FMCSA plans to put out new rules that will make it easier for carriers to update their UCR information in order to cut down on the number of carriers deactivated for not completing the updates. Additional tools are in the works to prevent out-of-service carriers from reincarnating under different names.
• Compliance, Safety and Accountability program.
The agency will continue to work on a rule for safety fitness determination, and it is working to update and modernize elements of driver and truck inspections. One change will eliminate multiple reports of the same violation, such as when a truck has more than one light out or when a driver forgets to sign the logbook on more than one day.
• The agency also hopes to fine-tune the CSA system’s ability to target carriers that maintain operations after being put out of service.
• Finally, the FMCSA is looking to implement the third phase of the CSA program next year. That phase will give investigators new software and other tools for conducting compliance reviews off site.
