In order to remain compliant with the ELD Final Rule, BIT ELD will not allow any edits to automatically recorded drive time.
The FMCSA has recently provided guidance to other ELD providers and drivers that has come to our attention here at Blue Ink Tech. You may have seen some of the public discourse on the subject of drive line edits and personal conveyance that led us to look more deeply into the issue. After some research, we found that we may have been allowing too much flexibility in drive line edits.
As much as we would like to provide more flexibility for our drivers, you’re trusting us to keep your logbooks compliant, so we will no longer allow automatically recorded drive time to be edited to Personal Use or Yard Move status.
In our research we found reference to this issue in a 2019 panel discussion held by the FMCSA. They had this to say about drive line edits:
Q:"Can yard moves of personal conveyance be entered later by a driver if they forget to make their duty status change when the situation occurred?"
A: "Once a driver fails to put that duty status change in, that movement will be shown on the drive line. Drivers cannot reduce driving time but can go back and annotate. While an annotation will not change the events that the ELD has recorded, it will give the safety official more information about the situation."
You can read all of the public meeting notes here: https://eld.fmcsa.dot.gov/File/Open/07220b9c-efe5-32ab-e053-0100007fdb64
Drivers must indicate they are using PC or YM status before they begin driving. Otherwise, the only way to indicate use of PC or YM is through adding notes to the Driving status.
The FMCSA has said that ELD providers who allow edits of automatically recorded drive time will be subject to removal from the Registered ELD list.
How will this change affect drivers using BIT ELD?
This change will affect edits in the Blue Ink Tech app, and suggested edits made by administrators in the Blue Ink Tech web portal.
The BIT app will block any attempted edits to periods of automatically recorded drive time. The driver will be redirected to add appropriate notes to the Driving status in question.
Click here for a walk through of adding notes to logs in the Blue Ink Tech app.
In the web portal, the administrator can add suggested notes for their drivers. The driver will need to accept the suggested notes for them to be added to their logs.
If a driver puts themselves in PC or YM, and then doesn't end up driving, that time can be edited later to Off Duty or any other status. Only time when the vehicle is recorded as in motion has edit restrictions.
Any driving events logged incorrectly as PC or YM can be edited to Driving later if necessary.