New York state transportation officials have confirmed that they are not issuing citations for Electronic Logging Device (ELD) violations at this time — but truckers won’t get much of a break before they start handing out tickets again.
An official with the New York Department of Transportation says that the state is not currently issuing any citations to truckers for failure to use an ELD, according to a report from the Commercial Carrier Journal.
However, New York State Police Staff Sergeant Terence McDonnell told CDLLife via email that truckers will only have a short reprieve from ELD enforcement.
He wrote:
New York State finally finished adoption of ELD regs and enforcement will begin January 16, 2019. Contrary to the article cited, the non-enforcement of the ELD regs was really just due the adoption process taking longer than expected.
Recently, the non-enforcement of ELD regulations in the state of New York has made headlines within the trucking industry as the New York Supreme Court issued a ruling on a year-old lawsuit filed by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA).
Just one month after the ELD Mandate went into effect in December of 2017, OOIDA filed suit against the state of New York, claiming that the state did not incorporate federal ELD requirements into its own state laws and therefore did not have the authority to enforce the law.
The lawsuit against the state of New York was part of a larger effort by OOIDA to stop ELD enforcement by showing that many states have failed to incorporate federal ELD regulations into their own state laws.
OOIDA has argued, with mixed success, that states that receive federal funding for the enforcement of commercial vehicle regulations from the the FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) must incorporate new federal regulations into state laws within three years and that states that fail to do this lack the authority to enforce the federal laws.
On December 31, 2018, New York Supreme Court Judge Richard M. Platkin issued a decision on the case and confirmed that current policy in the state of New York is that “no tickets or notices of violation are to be issued citing the federal ELD regulations, and no violations of ELD rules are to be cited on the inspection report.”
However, effects of that decision are only valid until New York incorporates federal ELD regulations into state law, which will take place in just a matter of days, according to New York State Police.