Truckers sound off on FMCSA’s speed limiter mandate, say the rule will trigger road rage

Thousands of truckers and trucking industry stakeholders have commented on a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) plan to push forward with rulemaking to require speed limiting devices on trucks.

From May 4 though June 3, the FMCSA is accepting public comments on the agency’s intent to proceed with a controversial speed limiter rule.

In a Notice of Intent document published on April 27, the FMCSA announced plans to propose that any commercial vehicle with a gross vehicle weight of 26,001 pounds or more be equipped with an electronic engine control unit (ECU) that will be capable of governing speed to a limit that will be determined during the rulemaking process.

You can click here and follow the instructions to submit your comment online.

Since the comment period opened on May 4, the FMCSA has received more than 5400 public comments on the speed limiter rule. While the FMCSA specifically requested comments on the programming or adjustment of ECUs that could be made to impose speed limits on CMVs, a large number of commenters took the opportunity to point out potential problems with a federal speed limiter mandate.

Many commenters said that they would be concerned about road rage from the motoring public if they were forced to drive a truck with a speed limiter.

Check out what some are saying below (edited for clarity).

“As an Over the road driver, limiting our speed under the posted limit is not a good idea. First your going to have more traffic jams. More frustrated drivers in all vehicles and major accidents. The general public has a hate for trucker/trucks. They don’t let us merge, they ride our tandems and don’t allow lane changes… I see being governed at the same speed so be a huge disaster,” — Carla Williams

“There shouldn’t be any limits on speed because it just gonna cause more congestion on the highways and result in more road rage type of incidents and that will be on y’all, plus you’re gonna lose so many truck drivers that just are not gonna put up with being limited. Plus most of the mega companies already have governors on their trucks so you’re just targeting owner ops with this. The problem isn’t speed it’s the fact that some of these companies are turning lose drivers with piss poor training but y’all wanna put blame on everything but what the problem is. What I wanna know is how much is the ATA and some of these other trucking lobbyist are paying y’all to do this. Your killing the trucking industry and it’s like ups don’t even care. I know these comments are for nothing. But y’all have to show like you care what we think before y’all screw us some more. Paying 6 figures for a truck to own only to be told what I can and can’t do. Might as well sell it and find another job,” — Johnny Swinny

“There is already a problem with traffic when trucks follow speed limits because 4 wheelers are usually running 5 or more mph over already. So putting speed limiters on commercial vehicles only increases the issue and doesn’t allow for lighter trucks than can climb a hill around another to do so safely.” — Ken Murray

“By limiting all trucks it will not improve safety in any meaningful way. In fact it will most likely have the opposite effect by creating long lines of trucks on the roadways with no easy way to pass slower vehicle they may only be going 3-4 mph slower. Also it will create more issues with normal passenger vehicles by essentially creating rolling roadblocks when a cmv is trying to pass another leading to even more aggressive driving on the part of normal passenger vehicles.” — Joshua McBride

“Just like the electronics logs were going to make the highways safer?? All they do is push the driver harder!! I got out of an eld truck into a paper log truck and don’t rush nearly as much! “Land of the free” right??? Pencil pushers that have never driven a truck before telling us how to drive our trucks!” — Adam Gottschling

“Speed limiting trucks is unsafe. It’s bad enough to have differential speed limits in some states, but when you limit all trucks to a certain speed it will cause road rage accidents.” — Shaun Coit

“I believe this will only make the accident rate go up and also cause more congestion on the roads! You see it already with the company trucks with speed limiters! They try to pass which can take miles to complete and in the meanwhile traffic backs up for miles and tempers start flaring which leads to road rage and aggressive driving!” — Matt Smith