The U.S. Department of Transportation’s recent announcement that it was rescinding a speed limiter proposal marked a significant victory for opponents of the trucking mandate.
Now, a bill introduced in the House and Senate aims to put the issue to rest once and for all.
The DRIVE Act would prohibit future administrations from having the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issue any rules or regulations that would mandate speed limiters on commercial motor vehicles.
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., introduced the bill in the Senate, while Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., sponsored the House version. Both bills are built around the idea that forcing trucks to drive below the posted speed limit would create dangerous speed differentials on the highways. When a speed limiter proposal was announced in 2022, FMCSA received more than 15,000 comments. The majority of those comments came from truck drivers opposed to the requirement.
“When you have bureaucrats in Washington not understanding what’s going on in the real world across the highways in America, that’s a problem,” Daines told Trucking with OOIDA’s Scott Thompson. “When I speak to my Montana truck drivers, they know what works best and they ultimately have the safety of their personal lives and the people around them as their highest priority. And what Joe Biden proposed were unnecessary and dangerous speed limiter rules on commercial motor vehicles. Here’s the reality: It would have done nothing more than cause more congestion and higher crash rates.”
As part of the DOT’s Pro-Trucker initiative, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on June 27 that the speed limiter rulemaking was being withdrawn.
However, the DRIVE Act would end the game of political ping pong that has been played over the issue for the past decade.
The first proposal to mandate speed limiters came in 2016, under former President Barack Obama’s administration. When President Donald Trump took office in 2017, the proposal was moved to the back burner. Former president Joe Biden’s administration resurrected the effort in 2022.
“The good news is that Secretary Duffy was able to move quickly through executive department action to change this (rulemaking),” Daines said. “The bad news is that the next administration, if it’s on the left side of the teeter-totter … could put it back in place. By passing the (DRIVE Act), it would codify it – and that will give us assurance that no matter who is in charge in the White House, this regulation would not exist.”
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association supports the DRIVE Act and encourages truckers to ask their lawmakers to support the bill.
“Studies and research have already proven what we were all taught long ago in driver’s ed classes – that traffic is safest when vehicles all travel at the same relative speed,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in 2022. “Limiting trucks to speeds below the flow of traffic increases interactions between vehicles, which can lead to more crashes.” LL
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