WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are delaying several rulemakings affecting the trucking sector, including a controversial rule that would limit new trucks’ engine speeds.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposed truck speed limiter rule, scheduled to be published last month, has been delayed to May 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest agenda released by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The proposed rule, which would require that trucks weighing over 26,000 pounds be equipped with an electronic speed governor to set the device at a yet-undetermined maximum speed, was originally scheduled to be issued by mid-2023.
The date for the controversial proposal, which generated close to 16,000 comments, has now been delayed three times since then.
FMCSA is also delaying – by eight months – proposed changes to ELD operations, including whether they should apply to pre-2000 engines. A notice of proposed rulemaking scheduled for October 2024 has been pushed back to June 2025.
In addition, a joint FMCSA-National Highway Traffic Safety Administration final rule to require performance standards and maintenance requirements for automatic emergency braking systems on heavy trucks was delayed until January 2025, nine months after its scheduled date of April 2024.
The NHTSA-FMCSA proposal, issued in June last year, was mandated by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed in 2021. Collision avoidance technology has also appeared on the National Transportation Safety Board’s “Most Wanted” list of safety regulations.
Other delayed rulemaking dockets include automated driving systems in heavy trucks (from March 2024 to December 2024), improving safety for female truck drivers (from June 2024 to December 2024), and new physical qualification standards for truck drivers with epilepsy (from July 2024 to June 2025).
The agenda also showed revisions to Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse procedures to better account for controlled substance violations are scheduled for sometime this month, after being delayed from November 2023.
FMCSA officials were not immediately available to comment on reasons for the delays.
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