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A House panel has rejected a push to protect commercial vehicle fleets using specialized safety lighting, diving into a procedural fight over whether Congress or safety regulators should dictate vehicle highway standards.
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard regulations require that installed brake lamps, whether original or replacement equipment, be steady burning. However, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has for several years granted or denied exemptions on a case-by-case basis to deploy pulsating brake lights.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted down an amendment to the Build America 250 Act surface transportation bill that would have shielded truck operators utilizing pulsating brake light systems from federal enforcement while agency rules are finalized.
The amendment, offered by Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL), sought to require a federal evaluation of the pulsing stop lamps based on practical data and real-world safety performance.
Pulsating brake lights, which flash rapidly when a vehicle decelerates to better alert trailing drivers and prevent rear-end collisions, have become popular among commercial motor carriers but face inconsistent state and federal regulatory enforcement.
Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), the committee's ranking member, argued the measure would strip authority from federal safety experts and disrupt active safety standard evaluations. The amendment "would weaken the standard for the transportation rulemaking committee to determine if pulsating light systems are safe," Larsen said.
"It's not the job of Congress to determine what complies with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. These determinations are made by neutral experts at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration," he added.
There is an imbalance, too, in which pulsating light systems are approved and which ones are not. For example, the Grote Auxiliary Strobe and Stop Lamp, a brake-activated, pulsating warning light, last November received a five-year safety waiver from the FMCSA. Originally granted in 2020, the waiver allows motor carriers to equip trailers and van-body trucks with a brake-activated, pulsating amber warning lamp in addition to the steady-burning red lamps required by federal regulations.
Grote in February petitioned FMCSA for an exemption that would allow motor carriers to operate CMVs equipped with auxiliary rear or side lamps that flash or strobe when controlled by Grote’s Rear-End Collision Warning (RCW) system.
FMCSA in 2022 denied an exemption request from Intellistop, another manufacturer of pulsating brake light systems, for an industry-wide exemption that would allow its module on all trucks. Intellistop has been approved numerous times by FMCSA by way of fleet-level exemptions.
