A new violation is coming to a CSA screen near you!

Posted December 20, 2022

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has announced that a new electronic logging device (ELD) violation will be added to the scoring in the Safety Measurement System (SMS). The SMS is the scoring mechanism in the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program. The violation that will be added to the SMS is an ELD data transfer violation, specifically §395.24(d), ELD cannot transfer ELD records electronically. This violation will carry a normal severity of 3 in the Hours-of-Service Enforcement BASIC.

Do ELD violations affect my CSA score?

Any violation of §395.24(d) written on or after December 1, 2022, will be used in the scoring starting with the December 30, 2022, data capture. The results of this data capture and scoring cycle will be visible in early January. Violations written prior to December 1, 2022, will not be used in the scoring.

What are the ELD rules for electronic data transfer?

According to the rules, the device must be able to transfer the records to an officer using either local transfer (Bluetooth and USB) or telematics (webservice and email). The driver must be able to do the transfer using both specific transfer methods the device uses. As an example, if the ELD uses telematics, the driver must know how to do the transfer using both the webservice and email methods.

Common reasons the records will not transfer include:

• The driver cannot execute the transfer due to not being familiar with the process;
• The device cannot get connectivity with the cellular network; and
• The device is malfunctioning and, as a result of the malfunction, cannot transfer the records.

If the driver cannot display (or print, if the system uses printing rather than a display) and cannot transfer the ELD records, the driver will be placed out of service. The violation that is normally written when this happens is §395.8(a), no record of duty status when required. This violation will result in a 10-hour out-of-service period and has a severity weight of 5 in CSA (which increases to 7 when the driver is placed out of service).

Avoiding this violation

This violation is written when a driver cannot transfer ELD records electronically to an officer, so to avoid it, conduct initial and ongoing training on how to transfer the records with your drivers. When doing the training, do it as a live, hands-on exercise that simulates what a driver will go through during a roadside inspection.

This article was written by Tom Bray of J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc.