Proposed Speed Limiter Rule Comment Period Extended By FMCSA
The Federal Motor Carrier Administration (FMCSA) is extending the comment period for its proposal to install speed limiters in commercial motor vehicles (CMVs).
The FMCSA has received more than 12,100 comments on the Federal Register so far, many of which are against the proposal. The move is a follow-up to a 2016 joint proposal between the FMCSA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for CMV speed limiters.
How Do I Participate?
Click here to participate. Once you have filled in the required fields, you submit your comment to the Transportation Department for review. All comments are considered public and will be posted online once the Transportation Department has reviewed them. There are also alternative ways to comment.
Comments on Speed Limiters So Far
“If you want more road rage and accidents make it mandatory for all trucks to do 65,” wrote Gary Bucher. “Only people that jump on a plane or a helicopter and don’t share the same shitty roads with the peasants would think speed limiters are a good idea!”
Michael Palmer wrote: “If you limit all trucks to one set speed, lower than the speed of cars, you are likely to create a situation of having 2 trucks, side by side, traveling at their limited speed. Neither one being able to pass the other, creating a bottleneck of traffic. This bottleneck could cause an impatient driver of a car to take the shoulder the pass the trucks, which would be very unsafe. This will cause more safety concerns than it will fix.”
What the Proposal Entails
The proposal does not give a specific speed limit, though it does state that “the agency is considering making the rule only applicable to CMVs manufactured after a certain date, such as 2003, because this is the population of vehicles for which ECUs (electronic engine control units) were routinely installed and may potentially be used to govern the speed of the vehicles.”
If the rule is adopted, it would affect CMVs “in interstate commerce with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) or gross vehicle weight (GVW) of 11,794 kilograms or more (26,001 pounds or more), whichever is greater, that are equipped with ECUs capable of governing the maximum speed be required to limit the CMV to a speed to be determined by the rulemaking and to maintain that ECU setting for the service life of the vehicle.”
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