Opinion ID: 186266
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: EOBRs

Text: 52 The agency's justification for not requiring EOBRs to monitor driver compliance is another aspect of the final HOS rule of questionable rationality. Recall that the agency had, in the NPR, proposed to require commercial motor vehicle companies to use EOBRs to monitor driver compliance. The final rule decided not to require EOBRs at this time. Id. at 22,488. 53 The agency gave three primary reasons for not doing so. First, the agency said that neither the costs nor the benefits of EOBR systems are adequately known, because there is no significant market for the devices, and because the amount of HOS-noncompliance that EOBRs would detect is unknown, as the agency did not test the (very few) EOBRs currently available. Id. Second, the agency said that because the NPR's proposed EOBR requirement was drafted as a performance, not a design, standard, enforcement officials would have to waste time and effort mastering incompatible readout procedures created by different EOBR vendors, and that the solution to this problem at least for now, is to adopt a rule that does not require EOBRs. Id. Finally, the agency stated that drivers see EOBRs as a direct assault on their dignity and privacy, and that the information recorded in EOBRs could be used in lawsuits against trucking companies. Id. at 22,489. 54 This explanation is probably flawed. In section 408 of the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995, 49 U.S.C. § 31136 note, Congress directed the FMCSA to issue 55 an advance notice of proposed rulemaking dealing with a variety of fatigue-related issues pertaining to commercial motor vehicle safety (including 8 hours of continuous sleep after 10 hours of driving, loading, and unloading operations, automated and tamper-proof recording devices, rest and recovery cycles, fatigue and stress in longer combination vehicles, fitness for duty, and other appropriate regulatory and enforcement countermeasures for reducing fatigue-related incidents and increasing driver alertness). 56 (emphasis added). This directive, in our view, required the agency, at a minimum, to collect and analyze data on the costs and benefits of requiring EOBRs. Deal[] with, in the sense meant here, means to take action with regard to someone or something. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 296 (10th ed.1995). Because the agency is required to ensure that commercial motor vehicles are maintained, equipped, loaded, and operated safely, 49 U.S.C. § 31136(a)(1), and because the agency is also required to consider the costs and benefits of HOS regulations, id. § 31506(d), the action undoubtedly meant here means, at a minimum, fulfilling the agency's statutory duty to weigh the costs and safety benefits of requiring EOBRs. (Although the statutory requirement applies by its terms to an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, we think the implication plain that the final rule, necessarily derived from the NPR, is subject to the same requirement.) True, as the agency points out, this statutory provision does not require the agency to promulgate a rule that requires the use of EOBRs; but it does require the agency to evaluate seriously whether EOBRs should be required. 57 The agency's explanation in all likelihood does not conform to this statutory requirement. The agency said that the costs and benefits of EOBRs are unknown, because cost estimates vary enormously. But nothing prevented the agency from itself estimating the costs. The agency's job is to exercise its expertise to make tough choices about which of the competing estimates is most plausible, and to hazard a guess as to which is correct, even if the lack of a significant market for such devices means that the estimate will be imprecise. Regulators by nature work under conditions of serious uncertainty, and regulation would be at an end if uncertainty alone were an excuse to ignore a congressional command to deal[] with a particular regulatory issue. 58 A similar problem infects the agency's discussion of the benefits of EOBRs. The agency concedes that it did not test the (very few) EOBRs currently available. The agency offers no excuse for not doing so, and we can think of none that would suffice to fulfill the agency's duty to deal[] with the issue of EOBRs. Given the large incentives truckers have to falsify their logbooks, incentives confirmed by the agency's recognition in the NPR that noncompliance with HOS regulations is widespread, 1 65 Fed.Reg. at 25,567, noncompliance with HOS regulations is no doubt a serious regulatory problem, as the agency and its lawyers do not deny. It stands to reason that requiring EOBRs will have substantial benefits by inducing compliance with HOS regulations, and the agency concedes that compliance with HOS regulations has benefits. It is therefore facially plausible that EOBRs will have substantial safety benefits, and it was incumbent on the agency at least to attempt to analyze those benefits. 59 We cannot fathom, therefore, why the agency has not even taken the seemingly obvious step of testing existing EOBRs on the road, or why the agency has not attempted to estimate their benefits on imperfect empirical assumptions. (The agency, as we have discussed, apparently had no problem making estimates based on imperfect empirical assumptions when it estimated the costs of increasing driving time from ten to eleven hours.) The agency is no doubt correct that the amount of cheating that could be deterred by EOBRs is unknown, id. at 22,488, but this lack of knowledge is willful, given that the agency has not even attempted testing of the existing units. As petitioners stress, the agency has provided for voluntary use of EOBRs among truckers for over fifteen years, see 49 C.F.R. § 395.15, so such testing is in all probability eminently possible. The agency has offered no good reason for treating this problem with such passivity. 60 Without such a cost-benefit analysis, accounting for benefits as well as costs, we do not understand how the remainder of the agency's explanation, all of which focuses solely on the costs of the rule, could pass muster in this court on petition for review. The second and third primary justifications for not requiring EOBRs — that implementing a performance, rather than a design, standard might be difficult, and that EOBRs might be unduly intrusive — might well be outweighed by the benefits of requiring EOBRs in the first place. We and the agency, however, have no idea whether they would, because the agency has not bothered to study what benefits EOBRs might have. This one-sided and passive regulatory approach in all likelihood does not comport with Congress's direction for the agency to deal[] with this issue in light of the statutorily mandated factors for which it has provided.