A group of organizations, including several from the trucking industry, is wasting no time asking President-elect Donald Trump to halt a regulation due to come up in May.
The 17 organizations rote to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Miami asking him to postpone and rescind the Fedweral Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposed rule required speed limiters on all heavy-duty trucks. The rule has been postponed in the past.
The letter, which was signed by the Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, Mid-West Truckers Association, North American Punjabi Trucking Association, and Western States Trucking Association, said the proposed regulation “will be bad for road safety, driver retention, and supply chain performance.”
The letter continued: “While a speed limiter mandate may be thought as something affecting only the “trucking” industry, FMCSA’s proposal would apply to every commercial truck weighing over 26,000 pounds. Our coalition represents the numerous industries that would be subject to this mandate, including agriculture, construction, and materials, along with small, medium, and large trucking companies.”
The speed limiter rule was initiated in 2016, but when it took office in 2017, the first Trump administration removed this rulemaking from its regulatory agenda and took no further action. However, in May of 2022, with President Joe Biden in office, FMCSA revived this mandate with a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, again proposing to limit heavy-duty CMVs to a single speed.
In the letter, signers said this mandate would make our roads less safe. “By establishing a one-size-fits-all federal mandate restricting heavy-duty CMVs to a speed separate from passenger vehicles, this regulation would create dangerous speed differentials between CMVs and other cars.,” the letter said. “Decades of highway research shows greater speed differentials increase interactions between truck drivers and other road users, and studies have consistently demonstrated that increasing interactions between vehicles directly increases the likelihood of crashes.”
The letter also said a speed limiter mandate will also make it more difficult for businesses to attract and retain professional drivers. FMCSA received nearly 16,000 comments on its most recent NPRM, and it is clear the majority of drivers do not want speed-limited trucks. Speed limiting trucks takes control of the vehicle out of their hands and increases pressure on drivers to complete their work.
“This mandate will also literally slow freight movement across the country,” said the letter. “To account for this, more trucks will be needed to carry the same amount of freight in the same amount of time, which would increase road congestion.”
The letter’s signers said these effects would unnecessarily hamper economic growth.
“In short, this mandate will be harmful for America’s truckers and small businesses, and it will be counterproductive to improving roadway safety,” the letter concluded.
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