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By Judy Greenwald, Despite recent state initiatives that decriminalize marijuana, the federal Department of Transportation does not authorize the use of Schedule 1 drugs, including marijuana, “for any reason,” said a DOT official in a statement issued Monday. Colorado and Washington voters approved measures decriminalizing marijuana in November. Jim L. Swart, director of the Office …

The Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) Website now features the Unsafe Driving Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) factsheet. This new factsheet is one in a series of seven that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released on January 17, 2012 to better educate motor carriers, commercial motor vehicle drivers, and other industry stakeholders …

by David A. Lieb, The Associated Press Stuck in a financial pothole, Missouri’s highway department has been selling equipment and eliminating employees to scrounge up enough money to repair its roads. Unless it also changes state law, it could lose tens of millions of federal highway dollars as a penalty for not adopting new safety …

By Lyndon Finney, The Trucker Staff The final rule on Hours of Service for truck drivers has been out now for seven days and it’s been problematic to find trucking industry stakeholders to opine about the new regulation for a couple of reasons. They are: Not at work during this holiday period, (the federal government …

DOT released its long-awaited final hours-of-service rule Thursday, leaving in place an 11-hour daily driving limit while cutting drivers’ weekly hours. The rule was not well-received by trucking and shippers’ groups. Click here for TT’s Special Report on the revised HOS rule. (5-pp. PDF) Source: Transport Topics

Now is the time to stand up for trucking, says the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council (NASSTRAC), a group that advocates freight issues on behalf of shippers. NASSTRAC has organized a one-day fly-in on Capital Hill Febuary 1 where roughly a dozen shipper and trucking organizations will voice their disagreement with regulations they say will …

12/19/2011 Did You Know…As a motor carrier, your Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) and Power Unit (PU) data from your Motor Carrier Registration form, known as the MCS-150, are used to calculate your Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) percentiles. If your VMT data is 2009 or older, it will …

By Oliver B. Patton, Washington Editor, TruckingInfo.com In a contentious session yesterday, the Senate Commerce Committee cleared the truck safety section of the pending highway bill. The committee cleared the bill 13 to 11 on a party-line vote, not because the Republican minority opposes the safety provisions, but because the measure includes an amendment concerning …

The integrated circuit chips on approximately 26,000 previously issued Transportation Worker Identification Credentials (TWICs) issued prior to April 5, 2011 were improperly encoded and may not work with TWIC card readers. The Transportation Security Administration says it will replace these cards at the cardholder’s request at no cost. Every TWIC contains a Federal Agency Smart …

Commercial drivers “ringing in the New Year” could be in trouble if they answer a ringing cell phone while driving. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has set January 3, 2012, as the effective date of the new hand-held cell-phone ban that was announced in late November and published in the Federal Register on December …