On Board Recorders Could Reduce Truck Accidents

Monday, 04 January 2010 13:09

The country's chief transportation safety investigator said all commercial trucks should be equipped with electronic on board recorders to monitor driver hours. Speaking at the National Press Club on Nov. 16, 2009, Debbie Hersman, chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board said the use of electronic on board recorders (EOBRs) would help monitor driver fatigue, a chief contributor to many accidents involving large trucks.

"At this point, the safety board continues to see fatigue in truck and bus accidents," Hersman said in remarks after her speech. "One thing that we feel very strongly about is that they ought to have electronic on board recorders in all trucks." The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed a rule in 2007 to require some carriers to use the equipment. Despite what some in the trucking industry might view as a sterner government action on EOBR enforcement, Hersman said she believes the proposal will be have minimal impact. The rule, she said, "would really only get to a small fraction of the industry, and those people would be chronic violators-people who had two successive compliance reviews that were poor."

According to the NTSB Website, only an estimated 930 of the approximately 700,000 carriers in operation would be affected by this requirement within the first 2 years of the rule's enforcement. "We think that if you want to raise the standard for the industry and level the playing field for all drivers, that you've got to have an honest way of accounting the hours that people are working," Hersman said. "We investigate accidents on a regular basis where we find two sets of logbooks."

The issue of mandating EOBR use has a long history with the NTSB. For over 30 years, the Board has advocated the use of some form of on board data recorders to bolster compliance with hours of service regulations set by the Federal Highway Administration (FWHA). In 1977, the Board issued its first recommendation on the use of on board recording devices for commercial vehicle hours of service compliance, in response to the FWHA's withdrawal of an advance notice of proposed  rule making on the installation of such devices in interstate buses. In the early 1990s, the Board urged the FHWA to mandate the use of on board recorders, based in part on the results of a study , "Fatigue, Alcohol, Drugs, and Medical Factors in Fatal-to-the-Driver Heavy Truck Crashes", which concluded that on board recording devices could supply a tamper-proof way of enforcing the hours of service regulations. The study also found that the most frequently cited probable cause or factor in fatal-to-the-driver heavy truck accidents was fatigue -- occurring in 31 percent of the 182 cases studied.

Because the NTSB has no regulatory authority of its own, the Board relies on other government agencies to adopt its recommendations on safety, Hersman said. "By and large, they agree with our recommended actions, but they may be constrained to implement them because they must consider factors other than safety in their decision-making process," she said, adding that some proposals "require societal and budgetary choices."