Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), DOT.
Notice of application for exemption; request for comments.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) requests public comment on an application for exemption from TowMate, LLC (TowMate) to allow motor carriers to operate rechargeable wireless temporary stop, turn, and tail lighting systems during temporary emergency towing operations in lieu of hard-wired temporary stop, tail, and turn signal lighting systems. Rechargeable wireless temporary emergency stop, turn, and tail lighting systems do not meet the power supply requirements for lamps in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR) which require all required lamps, with the exception of battery-powered lamps used on projecting loads, to be powered by the electrical system of the motor vehicle. Based on improvements in light-emitting diode (LED) technology, coupled with advancements in battery technologies, TowMate believes that rechargeable wireless tow lighting systems will maintain a level of safety that is equivalent to, or greater than, the level of safety achieved without the exemption. TowMate is requesting the temporary exemption in advance of petitioning FMCSA to conduct a rulemaking to amend 49 CFR 393.23.
Comments must be received on or before September 8, 2015.
You may submit comments bearing the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS) Docket ID FMCSA–2015–0238 using any of the following methods:
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Mr. Luke Loy, Vehicle and Roadside Operations Division, Office of Carrier, Driver, and Vehicle Safety, MC–PSV, (202) 366–0676, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE., Washington, DC 20590–0001.
Section 4007 of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA– 21) [Pub. L. 105–178, June 9, 1998, 112 Stat. 401] amended 49 U.S.C. 31315 and 31136(e) to provide authority to grant exemptions from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs). On August 20, 2004, FMCSA published a final rule (69 FR 51589) implementing section 4007. Under this rule, FMCSA must publish a notice of each exemption request in the
The Agency reviews the safety analyses and the public comments and determines whether granting the exemption would likely achieve a level of safety equivalent to or greater than the level that would be achieved by the current regulation (49 CFR 381.305).
The decision of the Agency must be published in the
TowMate has applied for an exemption from 49 CFR 393.23 to allow motor carriers to operate rechargeable wireless temporary stop, turn, and tail lighting systems during temporary emergency towing operations. Such systems do not comply with the requirement that all required lamps, with the exception of battery powered lamps used on projecting loads, must be powered by the electrical system of the motor vehicle. A copy of the application is included in the docket referenced at the beginning of this notice.
Section 393.23 of the FMCSRs, “Power Supply for lamps,” provides “All required lamps must be powered by the electrical system of the motor vehicle with the exception of battery powered lamps used on projecting loads.”
In its application, TowMate states:
TowMate is making this request because the use of conventional hard wired temporary stop, turn, and tail lights has many drawbacks that wireless tow lights solve. These include broken connections, frayed wires, burnt out incandescent bulbs, and the potential to be snagged or pulled from the tow light receptacle due to improper running of wires, and road hazards, along with the safety hazard of increasing the amount of time spent on the roadside or the scene of an accident by stringing wired lighting systems between vehicles and securing the wires.
Temporary wireless stop, turn, tail lighting systems can operate for 10+ hours of continuous use on a full charge, and in-cab wire-less monitoring systems give the driver constant information on the functioning of the system, displaying state of charge of the battery inside the unit, displaying the functioning of the system during operation, and warning the driver if the unit is no longer functioning. In this sense, wireless tow lights provide a level of safety and redundancy that is not currently required on wired temporary lighting systems. In an emergency situation with a drained battery, power can be directly connected to the temporary wireless stop, turn, and tail lighting system from a standard 4 pin or 7 pin electrical connection.
Without the proposed temporary exemption, tow and haul away operators will be forced to continue to use cumbersome wired temporary towing light systems, placing an unnecessary burden on their daily operations. The current temporary lighting requirements for stop, tail, and turn lamps require that the lamps receive their power from a direct wired connection to the towing vehicle with no ascertainable benefit from doing such. Wireless tow lights afford benefits that wired systems are unable to, such as redundancies like monitoring the status of the unit in real time, thus assuring their proper operation at all times.
The exemption would apply to all motor carriers using rechargeable wireless temporary stop, turn, and tail lighting systems. TowMate believes that use of rechargeable wireless tow lighting systems will maintain a level of safety that is equivalent to, or greater than, the level of safety achieved without the exemption.
In accordance with 49 U.S.C. 31315 and 31136(e), FMCSA requests public comment from all interested persons on TowMate's application for an exemption from 49 CFR 393.23. All comments received before the close of business on the comment closing date indicated at the beginning of this notice will be considered and will be available for examination in the docket at the location listed under the