Does driving PC while on 10

Yup ^^^^^^^

Had a user call in last week who uses thee 8/2 split sleeper often now. He was out of hours and was asking if the ELD malfunctioned. He had made 2 small movements in PC during that 8-hour "sleep" portion of the split.

 

Sounds like it could if you were in a CMV and...

 

Wow ... what a mess.

Here is something that happened to one of my driver's this morning. He followed the FMCSA guidence and got a hell of a ticket and an OOS order. Picked up a load, got unloaded and ran out of hours. He left the receiver and was going to the nearest truck stop 100 miles away, got a road side L1. The cop asked him if he knew what the words "reasonable" and "limited" means because the cop says 100 miles isn't reasonable, and there is a limit because of the word "reasonable". This happened in Indiana and I haven't got a copy of the ticket but he is sitting in a parking lot for 7 more hours.

 

Yikes. Since you know the exact origin of the shipper/receiver where he was parked when he ran out of hours, you should be able to fight that one as long as you can use Google Maps or some other source to show that there was no other safe place to park for 10 hours within 100 miles in any direction of the shipper. You don't need to say the client's actual name, but can you say what town it was in?

 

Advice from lawyer, no other details to be given. He already moving to have it dismissed and wants to keep it all quiet until it is over.

 

Speaking for myself, I think their established definition of reasonable depends on whether what you (or I) did was their idea. So the guidance on that would be: 4. Moving a CMV at the request of a safety official during the driver’s off-duty time.

Based on that I'd say to play it where it lies, as far as where to park, and if someone wants to call the authorities, good. Let them figure it out.

As far as my interpreting the connotations of what's reasonable here, I'll annotate the guidance (as if I could read).

3. Time spent traveling to a nearby, reasonable, safe location to obtain required rest after loading or unloading. [where reasonably nearby means...] The time driving under personal conveyance must allow the driver adequate time to obtain the required rest in accordance with minimum off-duty periods under 49 CFR 395.3(a)(1) (property-carrying vehicles) or 395.5(a) (passenger-carrying vehicles) before returning to on-duty driving, and the resting location must be the first such location reasonably available [where reasonably available would likewise mean it wasn't too far away to obtain rest after getting there, and was the first known safe location you could come up with, in a reasonable amount of time for trying to look one up, plus drive there, and perhaps find an open spot—or park in the wrong place anyway, and pretend to rest if someone kept trying to kick you out—except "available" actually meant you needed to call ahead for a reservation or status update before attempting to go there, if there was anyone to talk to about it, besides that some people love to lie too, such as the commander in chief (of all people, likely to be emulated no less), so either way it might amount to a guess, which isn't necessarily reasonable by definition].

Of course, a safety official who knew the area better might think of a relatively uncharted spot that was closer, and say that you (and whoever else you may have talked to) weren't being reasonable for not knowing everything that they knew. Which is why guideline number 4 is inherently more reasonable that way—moving a CMV at the request of a safety official—if they had nothing more reasonable to do than drive around telling sleeping truckers where else to park—or otherwise you were already there, and better off not trying to comprehend guideline number 3 in order to go elsewhere, because any guidance with the word reasonable is bound to be more unreasonable to follow than other guidance, if it overlaps (case in point).

 

You weren’t under a load the whole way?

 

No. I was empty

 

I've done that before and My DOT Officer that I deal with told me it was perfectly legal if you are not under a load.

 

Nearest means a place to park . Doesnt mean nearest truck stop. Thats where dash cam comes in. You activate video why your at nearest parking area showing no place to park then move to next and next. Its the only BS way to cover your a#$ and its Stupid