The United States Department of Transportation recently made some changes to the way motor carriers and truck operators interact, specifically concerning the usage of Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs). These changes are meant to help reinforce the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) previous rules from 2014 about anti-harassment from motor carriers towards truck operators using ELDs.

The new rule from FMCSA clearly defines what can be considered harassment, and prohibits all instances of it. In addition to this blanket ban, there are also safeguards within the new rule to prevent harassment, and also clear instructions on how truck operators can file complaints about ELD abuse from motor carriers.

FMCSA in the final ELD rule defines harassment as “an action by a motor carrier toward a driver employed by the motor carrier (including an independent contractor while in the course of operating a commercial motor vehicle on behalf of the motor carrier) involving the use of information available to the motor carrier through an ELD…or through other technology used in combination with and not separable from an ELD, that the motor carrier knew or should have known would result in the driver violating

[certains hours regulations].”

The new anti-harassment rule includes a few major safeguards to protect drivers from harassment:

All ELDs must have a mute switch or mute option.  One of the main reasons this mandate is being revised and edited is because the previous rules didn’t have any precautions against ELDs interrupting drivers during their off-duty periods with alerts, messages, alarms or other noises. The amended rule now stipulates that all ELDs which can make audible alerts or signals must have a way to silence those alerts during a driver’s rest periods.

Users must have a way of protecting all records of duty the ELDs log from manipulative edits.  Although the rules allow for changes and edits to be made to daily logs and other records stored in ELDs, the rules also require ELDs to maintain the original record as well as the edited version.

All users must have a unique user ID or log-in so that any changes can be tracked and can not be anonymous. An additional precaution to maintain transparency is mandatory annotations for all edits – all changes must include an explanation of why the change is being made. These annotations must be a minimum of four characters. While carriers can make changes to a driver’s logs, the edits must first be approved by the driver before being added to the record of duty.

Limiting the amount of information motor carriers receive from the ELD about location.
Compliant ELDs are not required to track and log drivers in real time, but instead, almost the opposite is true. ELDs only need to provide general location data – approximately within a one-mile radius of the device’s actual location. The location data can only be collected during a driver’s on-duty periods. FMCSA wants to limit the location tracking because not only does it help to protect driver’s privacy, but it will also aid in preventing harassment from motor carriers.

This rule will officially come into effect by December 2017, but compliance for the new anti-harassment rules start when a ELD is put in use, even if that is before the December 18, 2017 date.