Officers Lack Technology for EOBR Plan, TMC Says

This story appears in the Feb. 14 print edition of Transport Topics.

TAMPA, Fla. — Less than a month after the federal government proposed replacing nearly all driver logbooks with electronic onboard recorders, technology companies here said that smooth enforcement will be impossible until law enforcement agencies adopt more technology.

Members of the Technology & Maintenance Council’s EOBR task force said law enforcement officials in some states currently lack the technology needed to download and analyze electronic driver records. Consequently, EOBRs would have to be visually inspected during traffic stops, just like the paper logbooks they are designed to replace.

“Law enforcement is hampered right now,” said Capt. Daniel Meyer of the Kansas Highway Patrol. “A lot of states don’t have the technology. Kansas is one of them.”

Meyer said that law enforcement agencies’ hands are tied when it comes to adopting new technology because there is no money available to pay for it.

“Where am I going to get any additional money?” Meyer asked. Without federal funds to help pay for needed technology, he added, law enforcement officers might as well stick to visual inspection of driver HOS records.

In addition to his post at Kansas Highway Patrol, Meyer is chairman of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Driver Traffic Enforcement Committee. He is also a member of CVSA’s ad hoc EOBR task force. CVSA helped TMC conduct its survey of the enforcement community.

“There are many enforcement personnel and inspection stations that aren’t equipped for [HOS] download,” said David Kraft, senior manager of government affairs for Qualcomm Inc. and chairman of TMC’s EOBR task force. “If enforcement wants the ideal inspection system, they need to ante up and buy the inspection system that goes with EOBRs.”

TMC’s EOBR task force drew its conclusions from a survey that it conducted over the past year and to which 44 state enforcement agencies responded. According to that survey, some enforcement agencies are incapable of using the three federally prescribed methods for downloading drivers’ digital hours-of-service records.

Before issuing its proposal for a broad EOBR mandate last month, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had issued a rule in April that established new technical requirements for EOBRs installed in trucks built after June 4, 2012.

EOBRs are legally distinct from the current generation of electronic logging tools. FMCSA’s official name for the latter is “automated on-board recording device,” and the agency does not mandate that the old devices be capable of data transfer.

No e-logging device on the market today meets the technical definition of an EOBR set forth by FMCSA, but vendors have said that they expect to reach compliance by the phase-in date of that rule.

According to the rule FMCSA published in April, next-generation EOBRs must be capable of transmitting HOS data in several ways: by universal serial bus, short-range wireless — also called Wi-Fi or 802.11b protocol — and Commercial Mobile Radio Service, a regulatory term that refers to cellular and other radio-broadcast networks.

USB connectivity is a problem for both law enforcement and for EOBR makers. Both groups have cited concerns about data security of removable USB drives — the cheapest way to access data through a USB port.

“Not all states allow you to stick a USB drive in their computers,” said Meyer with the Kansas Highway Patrol.

Moreover, FMCSA has said that, for security reasons, it doesn’t want truckers and law enforcement personnel swapping USB drives. However, Deborah Freund, an FMCSA senior transportation specialist, told Transport Topics Feb. 8 that the agency still was “actively considering” all technologies that might help enforcement officials download HOS data.

As for short-range wireless connectivity, both enforcement laptops and EOBRs are equipped to use this type of wireless signal. However, the 802.11b protocol requires an Internet connection that may or may not be available where driver inspections are conducted.

Even if a driver inspection occurred at an official inspection station, there is no guarantee that a short-range wireless connection would be available. Only about half of the enforcement agencies that the EOBR task force surveyed said they had that capability.

CMRS, meanwhile, is simultaneously the most promising and least deployed option for HOS records transfer, Kraft said.

The technology is not new, but a third party would have to retrieve HOS records from an EOBR over a cellular network and then pass the data to an enforcement agency. Essentially, drivers would post their HOS data to a secured website, which enforcement officials then could access via their own laptops.

The likeliest form that such a service provider would take — none exist today — is a for-profit business, Kraft said.

TMC’s EOBR task force was set to have an informal meeting with Department of Transportation officials last week during the TMC meeting.

Even so, the task force was not optimistic that it would be able to clear up the remaining technical ambiguities of EOBR enforcement and implementation in time to write a recommended practice for the trucking industry before the next TMC spring meeting.

By then, the phase-in date for the EOBR technical specs that FMCSA passed last April would be only months away.

“There is a lot of urgency to getting this figured out,” Kraft said.