Ray Martinez has been the head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration since February and recently spoke with our colleague James Jaillet, senior editor for Commercial Carrier Journal and Overdrive.
The two covered a lot of ground, and here are Martinez’s comments on several important topics from his conversation with Jaillet:
- Hours of Service: “I think it’s worth revisiting the existing hours of service and looking at providing greater flexibility.”
- Detention Time: “We believe there’s a driver a shortage, and there’s a lot of reasons why that occurs. Some of it has to do with inefficiency in the supply chain. How can you have a driver shortage and have detention times that go into the hours? That’s a terribly inefficient use of a valuable resource.”
- Highway Safety and Truck Technology: “I don’t have to tell people in this industry who drive for a living that the landscape out there is dangerous, in large part because of bad driving behaviors by passenger vehicles. I’m hoping that — certainly in the three years that I’m here, and hopefully longer — that we will see a better integration of new technologies that will help crash prevention. I would hope to see safety numbers moving in the right direction. I think that’s an important piece.”
- Changes to FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability Program: “We’re not going to progress without robust industry participation,” he said. “We can take criticism, constructive criticism. That’s good; that’s the way this is supposed to work. But if we move forward with proposals that you agree with, what I would ask is that you voice your support when we do that.”
- Autonomous Vehicles: “We want to make sure we don’t inhibit technology, research, and testing. We want to make sure that that’s done safely, but we certainly don’t want to inhibit that.”
Read Jaillet’s compete article at Commercial Carrier Journal.
