This week, a bill was introduced in the House that would ban the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) from passing rules requiring speed limiter devices on vehicles.
The bill, H.R.3039, was introduced on May 2, 2023, by Oklahoma Rep. Josh Brecheen.
The bill would “prohibit the Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration from issuing a rule or regulation requiring certain vehicles to be equipped with speed limiting devices, and for other purposes.”
The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and currently has five co-sponsors.
The bill was drafted in response to a Notice of Intent document published by the FMCSA in April 2022 in which the agency announced plans to propose that any commercial vehicle with a gross vehicle weight of 26,001 pounds or more be equipped with an electronic engine control unit (ECU) that will be capable of governing speed to a limit that will be determined during the rulemaking process.
More than 15,600 public comments were received by the FMCSA on the speed limiter proposal.
While the FMCSA specifically requested comments on the programming or adjustment of ECUs that could be made to impose speed limits on CMVs, a large number of commenters took the opportunity to point out potential problems with a federal speed limiter mandate. Many of the commenters instead expressed concern about highway safety and road rage if the speed limiter rule goes into effect. Many also called for better enforcement of passenger vehicle driver behavior in place of limiting the speed on CMVs in order to improve highway safety.
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