During the first week of April, Mary Barra, the new CEO of General Motors, and David Friedman, the Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) testified before committees in the House and Senate. The Congressional Committees are investigating the recall of more than 2.6 million cars for issues related to faulty ignition switches that can cause the car to lose power and keep the air bags from deploying in the event of a crash. GM says it knows of thirteen deaths and 31 crashes that have been linked to the faulty switches. The hearings, before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, also looked at the NHTSA investigation into the switch failures, and why the agency failed to order a recall sooner.

A week after the first hearing, NHTSA announced that it was fining General Motors for failing to supply adequate information about the switches in a timely manner. The fine of $7,000 per day is retroactive to April 3, the deadline NHTSA had established for GM to supply the information. When NHTSA announced the fine, it also stated that a decision had yet to be made whether to refer the case to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation.


Starting May 21, 2014, Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) drivers will be required to have their medical examinations performed by a Certified Medical Examiner that is listed on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) website. If a medical examiner isn’t yet certified, drivers may refer him or her to this FMCSA webpage to learn more about getting certified. As of March 21, with two months to go, there were only 9,505 registered medical examiners, well short of the goal of 40,000 nationwide that the FMCSA had set for itself by the May deadline.

For more information, click here to visit this fact sheet (PDF) for drivers.


On March 31, a day before a court was scheduled to hear a case regarding the delay of the rule, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a rule in the Federal Register that will mandate cars and light trucks produced after May 1, 2018 (Model Year 2019 vehicles) have "increased rear visibility" for drivers. While the rule does not explicitly call for cameras, auto makers have responded to the news stating their intentions to fulfill the requirements with cameras. Separately in the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers says it would petition the agency for the flexibility to choose cameras as a replacement for side mirrors as well.


On December 31, 2013, fifty-five temporary tax credits and deductions expired. Among those expired provisions are several important to fleets, such as the Bonus Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS) or "bonus depreciation" and tax credits for biodiesel, propane and CNG as vehicle fuels. The provisions were not immediately renewed because the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means committee were interested in advancing a comprehensive tax reform package that would make some provisions permanent and zero out others as part of a larger deal.

As this year drags on, however, the likelihood of a grand deal has waned.  Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who replaced Max Baucus (D-MT) as chair of the Senate Finance Committee after Baucus was appointed to be Senator to China, has been more willing to extend the expired tax provisions. On April 3 Chairman Wyden, working with Orin Hatch (R-UT), the top Republican on the committee, held a hearing to examine and amend a package of tax credit extensions. Chairman Wyden, who said he intends for this to be the last tax extension package on his watch, is interested in comprehensive tax reform, and wants this extension package to serve the role of a test run for a larger deal later this year.


On Thursday April 10, the leaders of the Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) committee, as well as EPW Transportation subcommittee leaders, held a press conference to announce the contours of a plan for advancing a transportation bill. Their goal is a 6 year, bill that will not raise spending levels above adjustments for inflation. EPW Committee Chairwoman Barbra Boxer (D-CA) and Ranking Member David Vitter (R-LA) estimate the cost to be about $100 billion per year.

Their announcement comes three months before the Highway Trust Fund becomes insolvent and five months before the current transportation bill, MAP-21, expires in September.


On April 3, 2014, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made several formal recommendations about large truck safety to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The list of recommendations dealt with the mitigation of blind spots, protection of passenger vehicle occupants from being injured as a result of underriding the sides of trucks, trailers, and tractor-trailers, and improving traffic safety data concerning trailers involved in crashes.

The NTSB recommends that NHTSA require that newly manufactured truck-tractors with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) over 26,000 pounds be equipped with visibility enhancement systems to improve the ability of drivers of tractor-trailers to detect passenger vehicles and vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists.  NTSB also recommended that newly manufactured trailers with GVWRs over 10,000 pounds be equipped with side underride protection systems that will reduce underride and injuries to passenger vehicle occupants.

Finally, the NTSB also recommends that NHTSA improve the quality of the crash data collected by adding trailer VIN and model year to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System database.


Bill Shuster (R-PA), the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, along with Tom Petri (R-WI), who is chairman of the panel’s highways and transit subcommittee, sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting an investigation of the studies used to support the 34 Hour Restart rule that took effect last July. Before the rule took effect, drivers were allowed to restart their workweek in such a way that they could be on the job six days a week. Now drivers are required to rest for 34 consecutive hours that must include two rest periods between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. The two congressmen said that the studies were not based on sound facts and hard science, and want further scrutiny of a regulation they feel is unnecessary.