An OOIDA official says a recent legal victory for truck drivers with laptops in their cabs was consistent with limits as defined by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

OOIDA Member Gerald Cook of Amarillo, TX, was ticketed by an Arizona DOT officer in late May at the San Simon Port of Entry. The officer cited Cook under Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulation Sec. 393.88, which prohibits commercial drivers from keeping screens capable of receiving a television broadcast from view when the driver is at the wheel.

This past week, a Cochise County Circuit judge dismissed the state’s case against Cook.

Joe Rajkovacz, OOIDA’s regulatory affairs specialist, said the judge’s decision affirmed what OOIDA and even FMCSA officials had declared months earlier – that states cannot use a federal ban on in-cab television viewing for drivers with laptop computers.

“The decision to dismiss the charge was appropriate since the regulation used for the citation was improperly applied,” Rajkovacz said.

The judge in Cook’s case threw the case out because the Arizona DOT had taken many photographs of Cook’s laptop but failed to produce them, according to lawyer Jeff McConnell, who specializes in trucking clients for the Road Law firm, which was involved in Cook’s defense.

The legal fees billed by Road Law in Cook’s case were donated to the OOIDA Scholarship Fund, which awards college scholarship monies to children, grandchildren and legal dependents of OOIDA members.

The case against Cook had the potential to affect a large percentage of commercial drivers who keep laptops in their cabs, and long-haulers in particular.

In a recent landlinemag.com poll, 77 percent of those responding said they keep a computer in the truck.

Many truckers use laptops for everything from mapping software to digital logbooks and for communication with dispatchers. Some drivers use voice-activated software that allows them to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road.

Cook called OOIDA shortly after receiving the ticket and received guidance from the Association’s member assistance department.

Rajkovacz said OOIDA took an active role in Cook’s case to defend the rights of small-business truckers to continue conducting business effectively and practically without having to fear discriminatory application of the regulation.

“The erroneous enforcement of this provision was clearly aimed predominantly at owner operators and small-fleet operators,” Rajkovacz said. “Many at-large fleets have Qualcomms; small businesses have their laptops. It was a discriminatory application of the law that had dire consequences for small business truckers.”

Arizona DOT employees argued that some truck drivers chat or surf the Web while rolling, but they weren’t able to produce citations or warnings for such violations.

Arizona DOT officers suspended writing citations under the federal rule after Land Line Magazine and OOIDA questioned the practice in early June.

The Arizona DOT requested a formal opinion from FMCSA in June, but officials with the state agency stated more than one month later that they had changed their minds and would await discussion about laptops and other driver distractions at the annual Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance conference in September.

Cook’s legal fight spurred OOIDA Regulator Affairs Director Rick Craig to deliver a presentation to CVSA participants on driver distraction. At the CVSA meeting, an FMCSA representative said no state should be writing tickets based on FMCSR 393.88 – the ban on in-cab television screens.

Section 393.88 of the FMCSR states:
“Any motor vehicle equipped with a television viewer, screen or other means of visually receiving a television broadcast shall have the viewer or screen located in the motor vehicle at a point to the rear of the back of the driver’s seat if such viewer or screen is in the same compartment as the driver and the viewer or screen shall be so located as not to be visible to the driver, while he/she is driving the motor vehicle. The operating controls for the television receiver shall be so located that the driver cannot operate them without leaving the driver’s seat.”

– By Charlie Morasch, staff writer
charlie_morasch@landlinemag.com