Court of Appeals Overturns 11- and 34-Hour Provisions
July 25, 2007
The D.C. Court of Appeals has issued a ruling vacating the 11-hour driving and 34-hour
reset provisions of the hours-of-service regulations.
The FMCSA has until September 14, 2007 to respond. They may seek a stay, in which case,
should they prevail, the 11-hour driving and 34-hour reset provisions could be extended.
But it is also possible that the repeal may stand, and in 45 days the old 10-hour
driving and 60/7 or 70/8 rules (without 34-hour resets) may be reinstated.
Due to the uncertainty about which direction things will go, Eclipse has announced the
following strategy to allow its customers to deal with this unfortunate situation:
Eclipse will make the programming changes necessary to implement the Court's changes. However,
the changes will NOT be released into the shipping product until (and if) there is a high degree
of certainty that those changes are going to stand.
Because these new programming changes can be quickly downloaded via the internet by
our customers once it becomes clear they will be necessary,
only a few days advance notice is absolutely required. This will allow us to delay the decision
point to the last possible responsible moment, and will prevent the ugly (but possible)
situation where we could program the new changes and release them to the public only to
have the Court, at the last minute, issue a Stay for implementation.
Feel free to check back at our website for further information as it becomes available.
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