American Trucking Associations said the safety recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board emphasize the need for the Obama Administration to accelerate efforts to mandate electronic logging devices in commercial trucks and to improve its Compliance, Safety, Accountability fleet safety monitoring and measurement system.

“ATA is a strong believer that electronic logging would go a long way toward improving hours of service compliance,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said. “NTSB’s finding that a truck driver in a fatal crash, and many of his co-workers, routinely carried two log books is unacceptable and would have been prevented by the use of a mandatory electronic logging device. This individual chose to violate the rules, irrespective of what they were, and was able to do so by falsifying his logs. An electronic logging device will prevent drivers from disguising such violations in the future.”

ATA also highlighted NTSB’s recommendations regarding how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration identifies and investigates potential problem carriers.

“At issue here is how FMCSA uses its limited resources to focus on problem carriers. FMCSA must improve its CSA program to better identify carriers more likely to be involved in future crashes. We look forward to the forthcoming Government Accountability Office and DOT Inspector General CSA audit reports and hope they emphasize the need to ensure that the program accurately measures crash risk and focuses on unsafe fleets,” said ATA Chairman Phil Byrd, president of Bulldog Hiway Express, Charleston, S.C.

ATA supports a mandate for electronic logging devices on all trucks and further data-driven changes to CSA.