78 Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 1 / Monday, January 3, 2011 / Proposed Rules 

1 72 FR 3904; January 26, 2007. 

housing and providing food to the 

employee or MOW worker until the 

condition adverse to the safety or health 

of the occupant(s) is corrected. 

§ 228.335 Electronic recordkeeping. 

(a) Each railroad shall keep records in 

accordance with § 228.323 pertaining to 

its compliance with this subpart. 

Records may be kept either on paper 

forms provided by the railroad or by 

electronic means in a manner that 

conforms with § 228.323. 

(b) Records required to be kept shall 

be made available to the Federal 

Railroad Administration as provided by 

49 U.S.C. 20107. 

Appendix A to Part 228 [Amended] 

14. The last paragraph of the 

discussion headed ‘‘Sleeping Quarters’’ 

in Appendix A to part 228 is removed. 

Appendix C to Part 228 [Removed] 

15. Appendix C to part 228 is 

removed. 

Issued in Washington, DC, on December 

23, 2010. 

Jo Strang, 

Associate Administrator for Railroad Safety/ 

Chief Safety Officer, Federal Railroad 

Administration. 

[FR Doc. 2010–32924 Filed 12–30–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4910–06–P 

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION 

National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration 

49 CFR Part 571 

[Docket No. NHTSA–2007–26851] 

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard; 

Engine Control Module Speed Limiter 

Device 

AGENCY: National Highway Traffic 

Safety Administration, DOT. 

ACTION: Grant of petition for rulemaking. 

SUMMARY: This notice grants two 

separate but similar petitions for 

rulemaking, one submitted by the 

American Trucking Associations and 

the other submitted by Road Safe 

America and a group of nine motor 

carriers (Schneider National, Inc., C.R. 

England, Inc., H.O. Wolding, Inc., ATS 

Intermodal, LLC, DART Transit 

Company, J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc., U.S. 

Xpress, Inc., Covenant Transport, Inc., 

and Jet Express, Inc.) to establish a 

safety standard to require devices that 

would limit the speed of certain heavy 

trucks. Based on information received in 

response to a request for comments,1 the 

National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration believes that these 

petitions merit further consideration 

through the agency’s rulemaking 

process. In addition, because of the 

overlapping issues addressed in these 

two petitions, the agency will address 

them together in a single rulemaking 

activity. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration plans to initiate the 

rulemaking process on this issue with a 

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in 2012. 

The determination of whether to issue a 

rule will be made in the course of the 

rulemaking proceeding, in accordance 

with statutory criteria. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For 

non-legal issues, you may call Mr. 

Markus Price, Office of Crash Avoidance 

Standards (Phone: 202–366–0098; FAX: 

202–366–7002). For legal issues, you 

may call Mr. Steve Wood, Assistant 

Chief Counsel for Vehicle Rulemaking 

and Harmonization, (Phone: 202–366– 

2992; FAX: 202–366–3820). You may 

send mail to this official at: National 

Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., 

Washington, DC 20590. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Background 

On October 20, 2006, the American 

Trucking Associations (ATA) submitted 

a petition to the National Highway 

Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 

requesting that the agency initiate 

rulemaking to amend the Federal motor 

vehicle safety standards to require 

vehicle manufacturers to install a device 

to limit the speed of trucks with a gross 

vehicle weight rating (GVWR) greater 

than 26,000 pounds to no more than 68 

miles per hour (mph). The ATA claimed 

that reducing speed-related crashes 

involving trucks is critical to the safety 

mission of NHTSA, and that these new 

requirements are needed to reduce the 

number and severity of crashes 

involving large trucks. 

On September 8, 2006, Road Safe 

America and a group of nine motor 

carriers also petitioned the agency to 

require that manufacturers install a 

speed limiting device in vehicles with a 

GVWR over 26,000 pounds and that the 

devices be set at not more than 68 mph. 

They also requested that the 

requirements apply to all trucks 

manufactured after 1990. 

Summary of the Petitions 

A detailed discussion of the two 

petitions can be found in the request for 

comments notice. Items specific to 

NHTSA include the following requests 

from ATA: 

1. All newly manufactured trucks 

with a GVWR greater than 26,000 

pounds shall be equipped with an 

electronic control module (ECM) that is 

capable of limiting the maximum speed 

of the vehicle. 

2. The ECM shall be set at no more 

than 68 mph by the manufacturer. 

3. The ECM should be tamperresistant, and should be designed in a 

way that does not allow the speed 

limiter setting on the ECM to be 

adjusted to let the vehicle exceed 68 

mph. 

4. Immediately upon the rule taking 

effect, manufacturers should be 

prohibited from setting the ECM speed 

limiter to a maximum speed of greater 

than 68 mph. However, this requirement 

should not take effect earlier than the 

effective date of a Federal Motor Carrier 

Safety Administration (FMCSA) rule 

prohibiting vehicle owners or operators 

from setting the ECM speed limiter at a 

level greater than 68 mph for newly 

manufactured trucks. 

5. The effective date for installation of 

a tamper-resistant ECM should be 

established with a period of time that 

will allow manufacturers to undergo a 

systems integration process. The change 

to the engine ECM may affect other 

devices on the vehicle; therefore, 

manufacturers need some time to ensure 

that the vehicle functions properly. 

ATA encourages NHTSA to seek 

information from manufacturers to 

determine the length of time necessary 

to come into compliance with the rule. 

6. An appropriate tolerance to 

accommodate variations in 

manufacturing, wear, and maintenance 

throughout the lifecycle of the vehicle. 

For example, the same diameter heavy 

truck tire but with a different width and 

sidewall aspect ratio may have a 15–20 

revolutions per mile difference which 

will affect the actual top speed of the 

truck with a governed speed of 68 mph. 

ATA recommends that any rulemaking 

pertaining to this petition reference SAE 

J678, J862, and J1226 Recommended 

Practices. 

In addition to items similar to those in 

ATA’s petition, Road Safe America also 

included an item on retrofitting in its 

petition: 

1. Every class 7 and class 8 

commercial motor vehicle manufactured 

after the year 1990 shall be equipped 

with an electronic engine speed 

governor. 

Summary of Comments 

On January 26, 2007, NHTSA and 

FMCSA published a joint Request for 

Comments Notice in the Federal 

Register soliciting public comments on 


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Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 1 / Monday, January 3, 2011 / Proposed Rules 79 

2Comercial Motor Vehicle Speed Control Devices 

(1991), DOT HS 807 725. 

3Comercial Motor Vehicle Speed Control Devices 

(1991), DOT HS 807 725. 

the ATA and Road Safe America 

petitions. The Department of 

Transportation Docket Management 

System received approximately 3,850 

comments into Docket No. NHTSA– 

2007–26851, the majority of which were 

submitted by private citizens. Of these, 

many comments supported a regulation 

that would limit the speed of large 

trucks to 68 mph, which included 

comments from trucking fleets and 

consumer advocacy groups, and others. 

Other comments submitted by 

independent owner-operator truckers, a 

trucking fleet association, and private 

citizens were opposed to the rulemaking 

requested in the petitions. The 

remaining comments did not explicitly 

indicate a position with regard to the 

petitions. 

Comments from private citizens 

supporting the petitions include 

responses from individuals who were 

involved in crashes with heavy trucks or 

had friends/relatives who were involved 

in crashes with large trucks. The private 

citizen supporters of the petitions are 

typically non-truck drivers who stated 

that they are intimidated by the 

hazardous driving practices of some 

truck drivers, such as speeding, 

tailgating, and abrupt lane changes. 

These commenters expressed the belief 

that limiting the speed of heavy trucks 

to 68 mph will result in safer highways. 

Some of the organizations supporting 

the petition provided similar reasons for 

their support and the selected 

comments summarized below cover the 

range of issues they discussed. 

Schneider National, Inc., a major 

trucking fleet, indicated that its trucks 

have been speed limited to 65 mph 

since 1996. According to Schneider’s 

crash data from its own fleet, vehicles 

without speed limiters accounted for 40 

percent of the company’s serious 

collisions while driving 17 percent of 

the company’s total miles. Schneider 

stated that its vehicles have a 

significantly lower crash rate than large 

trucks that are not speed limited or have 

a maximum speed setting greater than 

65 mph. 

J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc., another 

trucking fleet, commented that a 

differential speed between cars and 

large trucks will result from trucks being 

equipped with speed limiters set below 

the posted speed limit. This speed 

differential may cause a safety hazard. 

However, J. B. Hunt believes that the 

current safety hazard caused by large 

trucks traveling at speeds in excess of 

posted limits is a greater safety hazard. 

Advocates for Highway and Auto 

Safety (Advocates) commented that 

large trucks require 20–40 percent more 

braking distance than passenger cars 

and light trucks for a given travel speed. 

Advocates does not believe that the data 

in the 1991 report to Congress 2 are still 

valid because the speed limits posted by 

the States over the past ten years are 

much higher than the national posted 

speed limit of 55 mph that was in effect 

in 1991. 

The Insurance Institute for Highway 

Safety (IIHS) stated that 97 percent of 

the occupants that are killed in crashes 

between heavy trucks and passenger 

vehicles are passenger vehicle 

occupants. IIHS stated that on-board 

electronic engine control modules 

(ECM) will maintain the desired speed 

control for vehicles when enforcement 

efforts are not sufficient due to lack of 

resources. IIHS stated that there is 

already widespread use of speed 

governors by carriers and a mandate 

will result in net safety and economic 

benefits. 

The Governors Highway Safety 

Association (GHSA) stated that large 

trucks are 3 percent of registered 

vehicles and represent about 8 percent 

of the total miles traveled nationwide. 

Also, GHSA believes that it is prudent 

to consider speed limiting devices since 

they are currently installed in large 

trucks and can be adapted to be tamperresistant. It stated that conventional 

approaches to vehicle speed control do 

not provide optimal benefits because of 

a lack of enforcement resources and too 

many miles of highway to cover. 

Several comments, including those 

from ATA’s Truck Maintenance 

Council, provided information 

concerning economic, non-safety 

benefits that would result from large 

truck speed limiters. The Truck 

Maintenance Council stated that an 

increase of 1 mph results in a 0.1 mpg 

increase in fuel consumption, and for 

every 1 mph increase in speed over 55 

mph, there is a reduction of 1 percent 

in tire tread life. 

Comments opposing rulemaking that 

would require speed limiters on large 

trucks to be set to a maximum speed of 

68 mph were received from many 

independent truck drivers, the OwnerOperator Independent Drivers 

Association (OOIDA), the Truckload 

Carriers Association (TCA), and private 

citizens (non-truck drivers). 

OOIDA commented that the 1991 

report to Congress 3 is still valid today— 

there is no need to mandate speed 

limiters because the target population 

(high speed crashes) is still small 

compared to the total number of truck 

crashes. According to OOIDA, speed 

limiters would not have an effect on 

crashes in areas where the posted speed 

limit for trucks is 65 mph or below. 

OOIDA believes that the petitioners are 

attempting to force all trucks to be speed 

limited so that the major trucking 

companies with speed limited vehicles 

can compete for drivers with the 

independent trucking operations that 

have not limited their speeds to 68 mph 

or below. OOIDA also stated that it is 

not necessary to set large truck speed 

limiters at 68 mph to realize most of the 

economic benefits cited by the 

petitioners because improved fuel 

economy and reduced emissions can be 

achieved with improved truck designs. 

TCA commented that a speed 

differential will be created in many 

States by the 68-mph speed limit for 

heavy trucks and a higher speed limit 

for other vehicles. This speed 

differential will result in more 

interaction between cars and trucks and 

may be an additional safety risk for cars 

and trucks. 

According to comments from CDW 

Transport, a trucking fleet, speed 

limiters should be required on 

passenger vehicles as well as 

commercial motor vehicles. 

Several comments from private 

citizens and small businesses opposed 

to the petitions stated that speed is not 

the only cause of crashes, that weather 

and highway conditions are also 

significant factors. There were 

comments stating that passenger 

vehicles cause the majority of the 

crashes between trucks and passenger 

vehicles. Some comments stated that 

truck drivers will experience more 

fatigue with a 68-mph maximum speed, 

which could result in more crashes; 

some comments expressed the opinion 

that State and local law enforcement 

agencies should enforce the speed of all 

vehicles on the nation’s roads and 

highways; several comments favored a 

75-mph limit for truck speed limiters, 

instead of 68 mph, to match the highest 

posted speed limit in the country. 

The Truck Manufacturers Association 

(TMA) provided information concerning 

the cost of tamper-proof speed limiters 

for large trucks. TMA estimates a onetime cost of $35 to $50 million would 

be required to develop ECMs with 

tamper-resistant speed limiters and a 

one-time cost of $150 million to $200 

million to develop ECMs with tamperproof speed limiters. With both of these 

ECM designs, there would be additional 

costs to make adjustments to the ECM 

for maximum speed, tire size, and drive 

axle and transmission gear ratio 

information. 


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80 Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 1 / Monday, January 3, 2011 / Proposed Rules 

4The reports are available at http://www.tc.gc.ca/ 

eng/roadsafety/safevehicles-motorcarriersspeedlimiter-index-251.htm. 

5 ‘‘Cost-Benefit Evaluation of Large TruckAutomobile Speed Limits Differentials on Rural 

Interstate Highways,’’ MBTC 2048. 

6 ‘‘Safety Impacts of Speed Limiter Device 

Installation on Commercial Trucks and Buses,’’ 

Available at http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs.aspx. 

7 Information on this study is available at 

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/facts-research/artresearch-Safety-Effectiveness-of-SpeedLimiters.htm. 

8The Australian Design Rule (ADR) 65/00— 

Maximum Road Speed Limiting for Heavy Goods 

Vehicles and Heavy Omnibuses specifies the 

devices or systems used to limit the maximum road 

speed of heavy goods vehicles. For additional 

information, go to http://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/∼/

media/7ebc7a9d-b94b-4ee8-bf82-aab41c743252/

speed_limiter_requirements.pdf. 

9ONTARIO AND QUE ́BEC MANDATORY 

HEAVY TRUCK SPEED LIMITERS—FACT SHEET. 

Available at http://www.mtq.gouv.qc.ca/portal/ 

page/portal/Librairie/Publications/en/camionnage/ 

limiteurs_vitesse/speed_limiters_note_info.pdf. 

Research Review 

The agency conducted a preliminary 

review of research in its evaluation of 

the merits of these petitions. Along with 

research conducted by Transport 

Canada, 4 the agency has considered a 

DOT Research and Special Programs 

Administration report published in 

2005, 5 and a synthesis of safety practice 

from the Transportation Research Board 

of the National Academies published in 

2008.6 Both of these reports indicate 

that there is a potential for speed 

limiting devices to decrease crash 

severity. Both of these documents also 

contain survey information pertaining to 

the current fleet usage of these devices 

and the speed settings of the equipment 

currently on the road. 

Although the currently available 

studies have been useful in the agency’s 

grant consideration, additional 

information on this topic is 

forthcoming. The agency anticipates the 

publication of a report on the findings 

of a study being conducted by the 

Federal Motor Carrier Safety 

Administration.7 The main objective of 

this research is to quantitatively 

evaluate the safety impact and 

associated economic benefits of speed 

limiters in commercial motor vehicles. 

This analysis is expected to include 

safety impacts as well as fuel and tire 

consumption data. 

International Speed Limiter 

Regulations 

The European Union has limited the 

speed of large trucks and buses under its 

jurisdiction to 62 mph since 1994. In 

Australia, large trucks have been limited 

to 62 mph since 1990 with a 56-mph 

limit for road trains (a road train 

consists of a tractor pulling multiple 

trailers).8 The European Union and 

Australia cited economic and safety 

benefits as the reasons for adopting large 

truck speed limiter legislation and 

regulation. 

More recently, Japan and the 

Canadian provinces of Ontario and 

Quebec have also mandated speed 

limiters. Japan limited large trucks to 56 

mph in 2003. Quebec and Ontario 

limited the speed of large trucks to 65 

effective January 1, 2009, although they 

did not begin assessing fines until July 

1, 2009.9 In addition to economic and 

safety benefits, the two provinces cited 

environmental benefits. 

The granting of the petitions from 

ATA and Road Safe America, however, 

does not mean that a final rule will be 

issued. The determination of whether to 

issue a rule is made after study of the 

requested action and the various 

alternatives in the course of the 

rulemaking proceeding, in accordance 

with statutory criteria. 

Authority: 49 U.S.C. 322, 30111, 30115, 

30117 and 30166; delegation of authority at 

49 CFR 1.50. 

Issued: December 27, 2010. 

Nathaniel Beuse, 

Director, Office of Crash Avoidance 

Standards. 

[FR Doc. 2010–33057 Filed 12–30–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4910–59–P 


srobinson on DSKHWCL6B1PROD with PROPOSALS