FMCSA and NHTSA abandon speed limiter mandate rulemaking

Key takeaways:

The Department of Transportation has officially withdrawn its speed limiter mandate for heavy vehicles, ending a long-standing issue and aligning with the Trump administration's deregulation focus.
Many trucking associations supported the withdrawal, but some groups had advocated for speed limiters, highlighting divisions within the industry.
Efforts for speed limiters date back to the 1980s, with studies indicating limited safety benefits and raising doubts about their effectiveness despite advancements in technology.

The yearslong project to forcibly limit heavy vehicles’ maximum speed has officially perished: the Department of Transportation is withdrawing its proposed speed limiter mandate.

DOT previously announced that it would withdraw the proposal in late June as part of a series of initiatives to fulfill an executive order from President Donald Trump.

"This was expected and is consistent with the administration's deregulatory agenda,” Dan Horvath, COO of the American Trucking Associations, said. “We believe USDOT can successfully balance deregulatory actions while enforcing sensible regulations that are on the books, in line with its safety mission."

The move concludes a contentious, decades-long issue for the industry.

Why FMCSA, NHTSA are withdrawing the speed limiter mandate

The move is a direct consequence of the Trump administration’s aggressive deregulation policy, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration justified the withdrawal by arguing that previous rulemakings didn’t make a strong case for safety and could have constituted federal overreach.

“NHTSA and FMCSA’s research and analyses contained significant data gaps regarding potential safety benefits and economic impacts, and the information obtained through the public comment process did not provide the information necessary to proceed to the final rule,” the withdrawal’s authors said.

The agencies pointed to recent advancements in other crash avoidance technologies (such as NHTSA’s plans for automatic emergency braking requirements), the impact of speed differentials on crash rates, and the social and economic burden of slower trucks. In addition, they argued, setting a speed limiter to any of the speeds previously suggested (60 to 68 mph) would conflict with states’ own decisions on speed limits commonly reaching 70 mph or greater.

Trucking's reaction to the speed limiter mandate withdrawal

Beyond support from ATA, other major trucking industry associations applauded the withdrawal. However, not every industry group had opposed a speed limiter mandate.

Lewie Pugh, EVP of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, thanked the administration for withdrawing the rule. OOIDA had long criticized the mandate.

“Not only would this proposal have harmed working-class Americans—small business truckers in our communities—it would have made our highways less safe for everyone on the roadways,” Pugh said. “We thank Secretary Duffy and the Trump Administration for prioritizing safety, small business truckers, and common sense.”

Gary Petty, president and CEO of the National Private Truck Council, also supported the move. For several years, NPTC’s benchmarking reports have found that the strong majority of private fleets already use speed limiting devices.

“The Council was concerned that FMCSA would establish a single nationwide speed limit for all commercial vehicles; in our latest comments to this docket, we asked the agency to allow carriers to have some flexibility in where they set the limit,” Petty said. “NPTC also supports enforcement of existing speed limit laws.”

Major industry groups that supported speed limiter requirements included the Truckload Carriers Association, the Trucking Alliance, the Institute for Safer Trucking, the American Trucking Associations during some years, and others.

The history of the speed limiter mandate

The federal government expressed support for CMV speed limiters as far back as the ‘80s. The Truck and Bus Safety and Regulatory Reform Act of 1988 directed DOT to conduct a study on the benefits of speed limiters for heavy-duty trucks.

The study, published in 1991, supported the idea of speed limiters—but also warned that the benefits were likely very small. Speeding trucks were much less likely to cause crashes than passenger vehicles and tended to cause fewer crashes. The potential for speed limiters to reduce crashes was “uncertain” and, the report concludes, “the benefits of mandatory speed limitation are questionable.” The department estimated that speed limiters could reduce about 30 fatalities a year.

The industry changed significantly in the following decades—the population of heavy trucks continued to grow while the cost of speed-limiting technology shrank dramatically. In 2006, the American Trucking Associations, Road Safe America, and others petitioned federal agencies to implement a speed limiter requirement for vehicles with a GVWR greater than 26,000 pounds, renewing federal interest in speed limiting. The petitions proposed a maximum speed of 68 miles per hour.

In 2007, NHTSA and FMCSA followed ATA’s suggestion and requested industry comments on the petition. In 2011, the agencies announced they would begin the rulemaking process to implement a speed limiter mandate. The agencies did not specify a speed, but NHTSA was considering 60, 65, and 68 mph as the maximum speeds.

The agencies published the first notice of proposed rulemaking in 2016 and issued an advance notice of supplemental proposed rulemaking in 2022. In 2023, FMCSA suggested the SNPRM would establish a maximum speed of 68 mph, but the agency quickly reversed its stance, stating an exact limit would be determined later.

When Trump entered the White House in January, he issued two executive orders that supported withdrawing the speed limiter proposed rule: “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” and “Enforcing Commonsense Rules of the Road for America’s Truck Drivers.” DOT leadership announced in June that it would withdraw the speed limiter mandate as part of the Pro-Trucker Package, following Trump’s orders.