Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration November 5, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

FMCSA announces its decision to renew the exemptions from the vision requirement in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations for 17 individuals. FMCSA has statutory authority to exempt individuals from the vision requirement if the exemptions granted will not compromise safety. The Agency has concluded that granting these exemption renewals will provide a level of safety that is equivalent to or greater than the level of safety maintained without the exemptions for these commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers.

FMCSA announces that it has received an application from B.R. Kreider & Son, Inc., (Kreider) for an exemption from the requirement that drivers of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) must be released from work within 12 consecutive hours in order to take advantage of the exception to the record of duty status (RODS) rule for short-haul operations. Drivers qualifying for the short-haul exception are subject to the hours of service limits but are not required to maintain a RODS during the duty day. Kreider asks that its drivers be allowed to operate under the short-haul exception when their duty day exceeds 12 hours, and states that the same level of safety would be achieved with the exemption in place as would be achieved without the exemption.