Legal Question

Why should the officer need to have a fax machine, pay for the paper, toner, phone line, etc. JUST to help you be compliant? What if you are stopped for a roadside compliance check instead of at a scale house, so the officer does not have a fax machine handy?

YOUR compliance is YOUR responsibility. If printouts are required, then you need to have the means available with you to print them. Period.

 

Well yours would be the first scale I've ever seen that does not have the capability to receive a fax, that's fine.

If you did have that ability, not allowing the driver to send the info to your machine to "printed" is just playing the old nitpick for revenue game that so many locations across the country now like play.

This does nothing but make drivers more difficult to deal with and, promote the continuing battle of us and them instead of working together to make the highways safer.

The federal guidance states that the driver must print the logs on demand, it does not state how they must be printed.

This leads me to believe that either you or your command are revenue hunting.

I would like to see this go to court and have a judge ask if a scale could have recieved a fax or an e-mail and then ask why the driver was not allowed to print the logs to one of those devices, I bet that a quick change in proceedure would happen.

 

Its too bad I'm no longer in the seat of truck, this is one of those things that need to go to court for a precedent to be made.

 

Sounds like a giveaway to the eobr manufacturers....... Which do not have to have the capability to print any logs out......is that correct ?

 

Just playing devils advocate here, what do you when EOBR is not in compliance? Do you seize it, or do you ask Qualcomm to fax/email you the last 7 days?

 

Are you willing to PAY for the service? Last I checked, most public fax services charge $1/page...or do you expect it for free? If you want the "convenience" of running e-logs, invest in the equipment you need to be legal. If you don't want to spend the money, don't run e-logs.

 

Excellent, that was going to be my next question.

The only way to get "printed" info from Qcomm or one of the other big name players is via either fax or e-mail.

Even Officers rolling on the road can get one or the other if not both and print copies in the car.

 

That is correct, they can only fax or e-mail if the Officer wants "printed" copies.

 

Two things I have to mention,

1 - the electronic signature isn't defined outside the guidance and is opened to interpretation. Just like other regulations for other agencies, there is no regulation that defines it. Unlike say the Pharma industry which uses 21 CFR part 11, the DOT I think has three of unharmonized guidances and no regulation. What I mean is their definition seems to be "verifiable" signature which is meaningless. How does the verification happen, by who's authority and with what safeguards to prevent forgery?

2 - Do you seize logs when you are handing out violations? See you can't seize a phone, this is a regulation violation, not a criminal act. SO if you want to understand what that means, I refer you to the UCLU and the DoJ who will be willing to offer you the proper guidelines on what you can and can not do.

NOTE to the OP - never hand over your phone, show the log to the officer but do not hand it to them. If you want to know why - ask a lawyer.

I agree. There are no guidelines to even the form used, I don't even think the word "Printed Form" is in the regulations, let alone the guidances but I may be wrong.

AND

Both the issues are not really issues. If you are using an EOBR, then the scale can have the driver request a printed copy from the company, I think pushing the issue to stick to the letter of the regs seems to be stupid by having the drive create the log by hand if the information is available from the company or the screen with a functioning EOBR.

But this brings up the fact that the driver has to keep blank log sheets with them for this purpose and if the EOBR fails - producing the log on demand. I would venture to guess that if push comes to shove with an officer violating someone because the officer refused to use an EOBR to see the log and violated the driver for not producing the log, I think it can be taken to court and the court may say that the officer will have to accept the EOBR readout over the hand written version no matter what. AND thinking about it, taking it a step further, the electronic signature can also go through the court to be defined.

 

And most of these programs are out there floating around in "the cloud". If these hackers can get into USDOT's site, JP Morgan Chase, Target, Home Depot and on and on what makes anybody think some hacker isn't going to get into these databases and they will not only know what you are carrying but exactly where you are, when you are sleeping and the information just keeps flowing. They have your DOT credentials, drivers name, pick up and delivery information. You could get to your pickup only to find out somebody else already picked it up. So what happens when we get hacked. You think the FMCSA will take any responsibility for putting our information at risk or for the loss of cargo?

And to just keep on keeping on, we are now going to be doing WI-FI inspections with the Geo Fences and transmitting all our information into "the cloud".