FMCSA Advisory Committee Begins Review of Outdated Guidance Documents

Eric Miller/TT

A Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration advisory committee on June 14 began a review of the agency’s plain language “guidance documents” aimed at helping carriers, drivers and inspectors interpret a slate of 700 regulations.

Scott Hernandez, chief of the Colorado Department of Public Safety and chairman of the agency’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, said the nearly two-decade old guidance was in some cases outdated, redundant and so confusing that law enforcement officers in some states were not enforcing some of the regulations.

“When in doubt, don’t document at all,” Hernandez told the committee.

The agency requested the 19-member advisory committee’s assistance in meeting a FAST Act mandate that FMCSA review the documents and report back to congressional committees by Dec. 5. The committee plans to meet again for two or three days in October to prepare its final report for the agency.

The MCSAC is composed of representatives of the trucking and busing industry, law enforcement, trade unions, driver training schools and public safety groups.

The last review and revision of the guidance documents, which pose and answer questions related to specific situations, was in 1997.

The congressional requirement is for the agency’s guidance documents to be “consistent and clear, uniformly and consistently enforced, and still necessary.”

At Hernandez’s suggestion, the committee began going through the current hours-of-service guidance documents first, tossing some aside, retaining others and calling for clearer language in still others.

“Hours-of-service requirements make up the majority of all Data Q inquiries/reviews,” Hernandez wrote in a memo to MCSAC members. “Several of these interpretations were not updated to align with the property carrier hours-of-service rules enacted in 2003.”

The Data Q process allows commercial motor vehicle drivers and carriers to request and track a review of federal and state violations and safety data issued by FMCSA that they believe may be incomplete or incorrect.