Incorrect ELD Violations and How to Correct Them
posted in Alerts by Brian Gray
Incorrect ELD Violations and How to Correct Them
We have heard of a large amount occurrences where the incorrect violation codes, during the soft enforcement ELD period, have been issued by DOT Inspectors.
The ELD soft enforcement phase began on December 18th, 2017. Every non-exempt driver was required to have an ELD or AOBRD. If these non-exempt drivers did not have a self-certified during this time, enforcement officers would give violations, but these violations would not affect a carrier’s SMS score, and drivers would be allowed to continue down the road instead of being placed out of service.
Inspectors were trained to log violations for not having an ELD with the violation code “395.22A.”
395.22 Motor carrier responsibilities – In general.
(a) Registered ELD required. A motor carrier required to use an ELD must use only an ELD that is listed on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s registered ELDs list, accessible through the Agency’s Web site, www.fmcsa.dot.gov/devices.
Uniform coding of these violations helps the FMCSA filter them so they can easily ignore ELD violations until April 1st, 2018.
Now that it is after April 1st, full enforcement of the ELD mandate is happening now. ELD violations, even those logged under 395.22A, will now be counted against SMS scores and not having a compliant ELD can result in an out-of-service order and the violation’s severity weight is a 5 in the HOS BASIC in the SMS system.
Reporting incorrect ELD violation codes
If you were one of the drivers during the soft enforcement timeframe of Dec 17th, 2017 to April 1st, 2018 and received an incorrect violation code by DOT Inspectors that could harm your SMS score, it is important to correct these violations through the DataQ process.
As a reminder, violations coded 395.22A until April will not affect SMS scores, but closely related violations will.
The ELD mandate is a complex regulation with a lot of moving parts and enforcement officers were not trying to harm drivers with incorrect violation codes. It’s understandable that some miscommunication has occurred between the FMCSA and the professionals enforcing the ELD mandate.
If you did not have an ELD installed during the soft enforcement period and receive a violation logged with a code other than 395.22A, such situated carriers may have ground for a DataQ system challenge to have the code changed to remove the violation from scoring in the system.
According to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration HQ office:
“The ELD compliance date was December 18, 2017 and therefore any ELD violations cited on that date and on are valid. The carrier may submit a DataQ [challenge] if they feel that they were incorrectly cited.”
So, any motor carrier who received a non-hours related ELD violation during this soft enforcement period would have to go through the DataQ process to have the violation points reversed.
These AOBRD/ELD violations would include:
- 395.15 Automatic on-board recording devices.
- 395.22 Motor carrier responsibilities—In general.
- 395.24 Driver responsibilities—In general.
- 395.26 ELD data automatically recorded.
- 395.28 Special driving categories; other driving statuses.
- 395.30 ELD record submissions, edits, annotations, and data retention.
- 395.32 Non-authenticated driver logs.
- 395.34 ELD malfunctions and data diagnostic events.
- 395.36 Driver access to records.
You can go here if you need to submit a DataQ.
Have questions?
If you have any questions or received an incorrectly logged violation, please call us and be ready with a copy of the violation report.
