A Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ”rule proposal” that continues the agency’s process of increasing the minimum amount of liability insurance carriers must have has cleared the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, meaning an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is likely to be published in the coming weeks.
The ANPRM is intended to seek trucking industry input before it produces a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and a Final Rule.
Dave Osiecki, head of advocacy for the American Trucking Associations, says the ANPRM will simply be a list of questions targeted at industry stakeholders as part of the agency’s data gathering process.
The current minimum, set in the 1980s, is $750,000, which the agency says would be closer to $2 million if it had kept up with inflation.
Trucking industry groups, however, argue that just 1 percent of truck-related crashes exceed $750,000, therefore making the rule — and potential premium increases — unnecessary.
