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The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) is calling for truck drivers to participate in its detention survey to collect data about driver experiences at customer facilities.
Using a short, confidential, online survey to gather data, ATRI is asking truckers to share details on their experiences with driver detention and the impacts it has on their day-to-day and professional routines.
The online version of this survey will help ATRI get nationwide input to gain a more complete overview of drivers’ perception of detention periods.
What is driver detention?
Driver detention is the time a driver spends waiting at the shipper or receiver outside of loading and unloading time. Detention time is historically problematic in the trucking industry and has negative impacts on:
What’s the point?
The results of this detention survey will help inform a larger ATRI study on how the trucking industry is impacted and affected by detention. The goal is to identify solutions for managing driver detention times nationwide.
How can you participate?
ATRI asks drivers to complete the survey by April 26, 2024. You can take the survey by going to https://www.research.net/r/Driver-Detention-Survey.
Some of the questions include asking:
Even though Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) scores for property-carrying operations are not visible to the public, the raw data is. Members of the public, such as customers, driver applicants, and your insurance carrier, can view your roadside inspection and crash reports.
That’s why it is important to review your reports for accuracy and use DataQs to request corrections when necessary to improve your safety record.
Two areas that may impact your scores include adjudicated citations and post-crash inspection violations.
A citation associated with a roadside inspection can be removed from CSA scoring if the violation is dismissed. This removal is possible under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) adjudicated citations policy.
For any violation received during a roadside inspection:
But the policy does not result in an automatic update to your file since court records are not tied to the federal database. It requires a request from you via DataQs. DataQs is a mechanism set up by the FMCSA to request a review of safety data.
To have a dismissed violation removed, drivers and/or carriers must submit adequate documentation, which can include scanned copies of certified documentation from the appropriate court or administrative body or a direct web link to the judgment results on an official court or agency website.
Following a crash, motor carriers should review the crash report and their CSA data. They need to ensure that any vehicle damage as the result of the crash is not mistakenly used in the CSA math.
Any vehicle violations discovered after a crash will be classified in one of two categories.
Only those with the “N” in the Crash column will be used in the CSA Vehicle Maintenance Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC) scoring.
To confirm crash damage is not scored, check your CSA data in the Safety Measurement System (SMS). When you go into the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC, the report will be visible under the Inspection History and should have a zero in the severity weight column. When you open the report, it will list the violations. However, it should indicate the violations are not included in the SMS and include the reason as being “Result of Crash.”
If you find the violations were entered incorrectly, you should use DataQs to correct the error.
Key to remember: A lot is at stake if your carrier is not monitoring its CSA data. You can bet others are watching your data, so you need to be monitoring it as well. Review roadside inspection and crash reports and file DataQs challenges, when applicable, to improve your safety record .
On March 20, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed SB 1515 into law. This bill is designed to better coordinate the leave provisions under the Oregon Family Leave Act (OFLA) and Paid Leave Oregon (PLO). The changes will make administering leave under these laws easier for employers by reducing most of the overlapping reasons for leave. Employees may, however, get more leave overall.
What’s changing?
Effective July 1, 2024, employees may take OFLA leave only for the following reasons:
OFLA will no longer include time off for parental (bonding) leave or for a serious health condition (the employee’s or a family member’s).
Leave reasons under PLO remain the same with one change: Employees may take PLO to care for a child only if the child has a serious health condition. Employees choose when and whether to apply for PLO benefits.
Generally, PLO and OFLA will not run concurrently, and PLO will no longer be capped. Therefore, with these changes, in certain situations employees could end up being entitled to take up to 38 total weeks of leave under both laws. An employee could, for example, take 12 weeks of OFLA leave to care for a child or for bereavement, another 12 weeks of OFLA for pregnancy disability, 12 weeks of PLO parental leave or for a serious health condition, and another two weeks of PLO for pregnancy disability.
If employees are eligible and the reason qualifies, the OFLA or PLO leave will run concurrently with leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
Wages capped
Employers may cap the use of OFLA and PLO to the amount that would result in an employee receiving 100 percent of their wages. Currently, employees using OFLA and PLO can end up with more than 100 percent of their wages.
Key to remember: Employers with employees in Oregon need to prepare for more changes to OFLA and PLO, but the changes should make administering leave easier.
Employees know that a good job provides income, stability, and security for them and their families. Many companies recognize that providing good quality jobs not only makes them an employer of choice, doing so creates a clear competitive advantage when it comes to recruitment, retention, and execution of a company’s mission.
According to the Departments of Commerce and Labor, eight principles make up the formula for a good job:
1. Recruitment and hiring: Companies that have a foundation in diversified hiring set themselves apart when qualified applicants are actively recruited — especially those from underserved communities. Applicants succeed when they are free from discrimination, including unequal treatment or application of selection criteria that are unrelated to job performance. Applicants should be evaluated on relevant skills-based requirements, and not unnecessary educational requirements.
2. Benefits: Employers that offer all employees (full- and part-time) family-sustaining benefits that promote economic security and mobility are key. These benefits include health insurance, a retirement plan, employees’ compensation benefits, work-family benefits such as paid leave and caregiving support, and others that might arise from engagement with employees. Employees should be empowered and encouraged to use these benefits.
3. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA): All employees should have equal opportunity. Companies with employees who are respected, empowered, and treated fairly position themselves for success. DEIA is a core value and practiced norm in workplaces of employers of choice.
4. Empowerment and representation: Employers should invite employees to contribute to decisions about their work, how it is performed, and organizational direction. By law, employees have the right to form and join unions, and are free to engage in protected, concerted activity, without fear of retaliation.
5. Job security and working conditions: Employees who have a safe, healthy, and accessible workplace built on their input, value working for their employer. Employees should have job security without arbitrary or discriminatory discipline or dismissal. For employers that use it, electronic monitoring, data, and algorithms should be transparent, equitable, and carefully deployed with input from employees. By law, employees must be free from harassment, discrimination, and retaliation at work. Employers should properly classify workers under applicable laws.
6. Organizational culture: All employees belong, are valued, contribute meaningfully to the organization, and are engaged and respected, especially by leadership.
7. Pay: All employees should be paid a stable and predictable living wage before overtime, tips, and commissions. Employees’ pay should be fair, transparent, and equitable. Employees’ wages should reflect their increased skills and experience.
8. Skills and career advancement: Employees appreciate having equitable opportunities and tools to progress within their organizations or outside them. Employees should have transparent promotion or advancement opportunities. Employers, therefore, should give employees access to quality training and education.
Even though not every employer can achieve all of these principles, those that want to be an employer of choice now and in the future can use these as guidelines.
Key to remember: Using some of these or similar principles might help create or adjust jobs that help attract quality candidates and keep valuable employees, promoting goals of becoming an employer of choice.
Operators of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs), from work trucks to tractor-trailer combinations, should know the status of these three significant vehicle safety technology rules.
Well before vehicle safety technology mandates, capital spending plans must consider the potential impact on the cost of vehicle purchases. Building the capability to maintain these systems must also be on the radar.
The AEB final rule is expected by April 2024 and could require these systems on new medium to heavy-duty vehicles, 10,001 pounds and greater.
As proposed, new vehicles, 10,001 pounds to 26,000 pounds, will be subject four years from the final rule. Most new vehicles, 26,001 pounds or greater, will be subject within three years since they already must have electronic stability control (ESC).
The standard would set the lowest speed at which AEB will engage, and the system would activate at or above that speed. Also, inspections and maintenance of these systems will be required under Section 396.3 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs).
Common objections to the AEB proposal are false activations and not enough has been done to address these issues before a mandate.
Carriers that operate vehicles equipped with AEB should already have technicians or vendors skilled in repairing and maintaining these systems to avoid malfunctions and downtime.
In December 2023, FMCSA sent a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. FMCSA expects to issue the NPRM by April of 2024 to amend the rules to account for CMVs equipped with automated driving systems (autonomous vehicles (AVs) that operate without drivers in the vehicle). The focus is on the inspection, repair, and maintenance regulations along with requiring carriers to maintain electronic stability control (ESC) systems.
A brief history of this initiative includes:
A hotly debated topic in recent years is the potential mandate for speed limiters on heavy-duty vehicles. A Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is on FMCSA’s docket for May 2024. The proposal will require all vehicles rated or weighing 26,001 pounds or more with an electronic engine control unit (ECU) to be programmed to a speed limit determined by the rulemaking.
Safety groups would like the limit to be set in the 60-69 mph range. However, detractors note that a lower limit could create an unsafe speed differential with non-CMVs and limit productivity. However, a programmed speed limit should reduce crash severity. Increased fuel efficiency is a benefit already experienced by carriers using speed-limiting technology.
Key to remember: 2024 should be a busy year with these three major vehicle safety rules expected to progress in the next two months.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency) is proposing to require manufacturers (including importers) of 16 chemical substances to submit copies and lists of certain unpublished health and safety studies to EPA. Health and safety studies sought by this action will help inform EPA's responsibilities pursuant to TSCA, including prioritization, risk evaluation, and risk management.
DATES: This proposed rule is published in the Federal Register March 26, 2024, page 20918.
View proposed rule.
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