WASHINGTON – Over 300 Sikh-American truck drivers have returned to Indiana from Washington DC and are forming a truck line on Interstate 465 to call attention to a directive from Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) that poses not only economic threat, but added highway safety threats. These devices can be easily hacked into, is their contention.
This rule will take effect on December 18, 2017, and will require Electronic Logging Devices(ELD) in almost all commercial trucks. The devices will mean not only higher costs on the American consumers but present new and not well-understood threats to highway safety, according to SikhPAC founder and president Gurinder Singh Khalsa.
Indianapolis-based Sikhs Political Action Committee seeks to delay the rule until it can be presented in a more workable fashion.
The Sikh truck drivers went to Washington DC as part of a broad-based national effort and a coalition to inform President Donald Trump and the American consumers of the threat from electronic logging devices.
Their concern is the same as the other members of the coalition and groups against the ELD. The concern is that practices for this new technology vary between manufacturers and FMCSA has not approved devices.
They seek delay in implementation of the ELD mandate so that truckers across the United States understand the law and can follow it accurately, responsibly and with little trouble. As it stands now, the confusion over the mandate and which devices will comply is unfair to the trucking industry and individual small businessmen who own their trucks.
The impact of regulation on the consumer economy may be devastating. Trucks deliver the goods and products just in time. Delays will be costly to businesses, and small business will suffer the adverse impacts the most.
