DOT Increases Fines for 2024

Happy New Year! As people make new resolutions to improve themselves for the new year, January 1st is also the most popular day for changes in laws and regulations, in part because of how easy it is to remember as a date.

One such change is an increase of regulatory fines to match inflation, under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015.

Details

The amount that the United States Department of Transportation is increasing regulatory fines for 2024 is based on the Consumer Price Index increase for 2023: approximately 3%, with some wiggle room for rounding to dollar amounts.

If you want to read about all of the increases (and there are dozens of them), you can do so on the Final Rule posted on the Federal Register. Here are some examples:

• Driving without a Commercial Driver’s License: $6,755 to $6,974.
• Violation of registration conditions: $971 to $1,002.
• Driving a vehicle deemed to be out-of-service: $2,232 to $2,304.
• Driving under the influence (first offense): $3,740 to $3,861.
• Financial responsibility violations: $19,933 to $20,017. This one is especially interesting because the fine could have been applied to maintaining financial responsibility if the fleet were paying more attention.

We compiled ones that we believe would apply to every fleet in the nation, but there may be specific ones that apply directly to your business, such as ones relating to the hauling of hazardous materials or traveling to Mexico and Canada.

We highly suggest you click over to the Federal Register webpage and give it a quick look.

Conclusion

The government makes these inflation adjustments to make sure that the penalties for violating regulations continue to hurt year after year. The pain is the point: if safety will not cause a driver to hold off from partaking in alcohol before getting behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer combo, a $3,861 punch to the wallet might just be enough to convince them to think twice.

These changes are effective immediately, so be sure to continue driving safety.

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