WASHINGTON — Three federal rulemakings that have cost implications for truckers and motor carriers are on the short-term horizon for a former top official at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Earl Adams, who served as FMCSA’s deputy administrator and chief counsel under former administrator Robin Hutcheson, led a team at the agency that is developing the first major set of rules for high-level automation in heavy-duty trucks.
The result of that effort — a proposed rule on autonomous driving systems (ADS) — is on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s calendar for rollout in December.
Combined with a final rule on automatic emergency braking (AEB) and a proposed rule to set a federal top speed for trucks, they rank as the most anticipated regulations on Adams’ radar.
“Whether the outcome of the election is a Trump or a Harris administration, I think you’re going to continue to see significant efforts to collect data around AV [autonomous vehicle] systems already deployed on the roads,” Adams told FreightWaves in an interview.
ADS guard rails
Adams, now a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, said the Trump administration took an industry-driven approach toward the development of autonomous vehicle operations by encouraging feedback from the companies that could benefit from them the most.
The Biden administration, in contrast, “was focused on leveraging technology to get safer outcomes,” he said. “We were willing to establish guardrails – that is, an actual rule – as opposed to letting the industry dictate what would happen, and I spent the better part of my two and a half years in the administration trying to develop those guardrails.”
Higher costs for training and certifying individuals performing enhanced inspections for higher levels of automation are expected to be considered in the proposed rule, as well as the potential for sidelining trucks and their drivers with additional inspections that could reduce the amount of time available for revenue-generating service.
Adams cautioned, however, that given recent and growing concerns from labor, getting an AV rule proposed next year could prove difficult even in a Harris administration.
Automatic braking rule to set new standards
A final rule regulating a specific type of automation — braking — has been scheduled for publication in the Federal Register in January, to be issued jointly by FMCSA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The rulemaking “is expected to establish performance standards and motor carrier maintenance requirements for AEB systems on heavy trucks and accompanying test procedures for measuring the performance of the AEB systems,” according to a rule summary.
“I’ll be looking to see if they actually move forward on that,” Adams said. “We have a braking rule in place now for passenger cars, but we saw an opportunity to work hand in glove with NHTSA to extend that to trucking.”
The National Association of Small Trucking Companies (NASTC), which represents thousands of small-business motor carriers, contends that technology mandates such as AEB will ultimately raise costs for shippers and consumers, due to higher capital costs for new trucks.
“Further, more expensive, new model trucks slow turnover of older trucks,” said NASTC President David Owen, in comments submitted on the AEB proposed rule.
Owen also asserts that the safety case for mandating AEBs has not yet been adequately assessed nor has the technology been perfected. For example, when AEB’s activate suddenly, it can catch a truck driver by surprise, he said.
“The suddenness of the device’s action causes near-misses and may require evasive action on the professional driver’s part. At present and for the foreseeable future, AEBs present more of a threat to road safety than a solution.”
Speed limiter anxiety
An even more controversial rulemaking on the horizon for trucking that Adams is keeping tabs on is a requirement by FMCSA to limit the top speeds of heavy-duty truck engines equipped with electronic engine control units. That speed limit is to be determined by a proposed rule slated for May 2025.
Much of the criticism FMCSA received was from smaller truck owners and owner-operators, who believe that limiting speeds would make it more difficult to compete with larger carriers – many of which already employ speed limiting devices in their fleets – and would put them out of business.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which strongly opposes speed limiting devices, also contends that they are also unsafe due to increasing speed differentials that would occur with other vehicles on the highway if there was a mandated top speed for heavy trucks.
Adams acknowledged that the FMCSA “received a lot of criticism for the speed limiter proposed rule,” he said.
“But even now, looking back nine months or so to when I was at the agency, we approached this without bias or preconceived ideas, whether speed limiters are good or bad,” he said. “It was an extremely apolitical approach to a technology that has been around for years among fleet owners.
“What was on our mind was the fact that we have 40,000 deaths on the highways per year, with 3,000 coming from commercial trucks, and a large percentage of those were speed-related. So if we can use technology to limit the speed and thus can save lives — that’s the reason we took this on and are so committed to trying to solve it.”
