When FMCSA and NHTSA jointly withdrew the 2016 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would have capped heavy trucks at 60 to 68 miles per hour in July 2025, the plaintiff bar lost a straightforward negligence-per-se argument tied to regulatory non-compliance. What it did not lose is the underlying case. Commercial truck speed remains one of the most significant contributing factors in fatal and catastrophic trucking crashes, and the evidentiary tools to prove it, including telematics data, electronic logging device speed records, engine control module downloads, and internal carrier speed policies, did not disappear with the rule.
The Telematics Record Is Your First Stop
Every modern heavy truck equipped with a fleet management system generates a real-time data stream that includes GPS-tracked speed, rapid acceleration and deceleration events, hard braking, lane departures, and in some configurations forward collision alerts. The telematics unit, provided by vendors such as Omnitracs, Samsara, or Geotab, logs this data in the cloud and retains it for periods ranging from 30 days to over a year depending on the carrier's subscription and storage settings.
A preservation demand for telematics data must go out within hours of the crash, not days. Carriers with safety-conscious compliance programs often retain this data longer than the minimum, but some carriers who have had prior incidents deliberately select shorter retention windows. If the demand arrives after the retention period closes, the data is gone and any subsequent demand for sanctions rests on whether you can prove the carrier was already on notice that litigation was likely before the deletion occurred.
In a serious crash, the answer is usually yes: the moment a commercial truck is involved in a fatality or serious injury, litigation is reasonably foreseeable, and courts have imposed adverse inference instructions on carriers who allowed routine data deletion to proceed after such an event. Preserve first, argue later.
The ECM Download and Pre-Crash Speed
The vehicle's engine control module retains a snapshot of operating conditions in the seconds before a crash event, typically 30 to 60 seconds depending on the ECM manufacturer. Unlike telematics data, which is transmitted to a cloud server, the ECM data resides in the vehicle itself and must be downloaded through a direct connection using manufacturer-specific software. The vehicle must be preserved for this purpose.
Send a preservation demand to the carrier and the carrier's insurer requiring them to maintain the subject vehicle in its post-crash condition, in a secure lot, accessible for inspection. In fatal crashes, the trucking company's first instinct is often to have the truck repaired and returned to service. Once the ECM is overwritten by post-crash operation, the pre-crash data is lost permanently. If the carrier allows the truck to return to service before your expert can download the ECM, the spoliation argument becomes the centerpiece of the case, and nuclear verdict exposure increases substantially.
Using the Carrier's Own Speed Policy Against It
The withdrawal of the FMCSA speed limiter mandate does not mean carriers have no speed obligations. Many carriers adopted internal speed management policies, including voluntary speed governor settings, as part of their insurance requirements or safety culture programs. When a crash involves a truck that was traveling faster than the carrier's own stated speed limit, the deviation from internal policy is powerful evidence of negligence independent of any regulatory standard.
Request the carrier's full safety policy manual, driver handbook, dispatcher communications, and any records showing the speed governor setting on the subject vehicle. If the governor was set at 68 mph in the safety manual but disabled or tampered with before the crash, the carrier faces a punitive damages argument: it told its own drivers and its insurer that vehicles would be governed to a safe speed, then allowed the governor to be circumvented. Courts have permitted punitive damages claims to go to the jury in trucking cases where the carrier's safety programs were window-dressing rather than operational reality.
Ask specifically in discovery whether the carrier received any violation history, CSA score, or safety audit findings related to speed management in the two years before the crash. FMCSA's Compliance, Safety, Accountability data is partially public, and carriers with elevated BASIC scores in the unsafe driving category are candidates for prior notice arguments. For the full discovery toolkit in trucking cases, including how to compel production of dispatch records and prior incident histories, see the truck and motorcycle section of this site.
State Law Negligence Per Se Remains Available
Even without the federal speed limiter rule, state speed limits operate as negligence per se predicates. If the ECM or telematics data shows the truck was traveling at 85 miles per hour in a 65-mile-per-hour zone, the jury instruction on negligence per se is available based on the state traffic statute, not on any federal regulation. This is not a new argument, and it has not been affected by the mandate withdrawal.
What the mandate withdrawal does affect is the argument that a truck operating at 70 mph in a 70-mph zone was nonetheless negligent because it violated a federal standard. That argument was available if the mandate had passed; it is no longer available. The negligence case against a truck that was within state speed limits but was traveling at an unsafe speed for conditions, given weather, traffic, load weight, or road geometry, must be built on expert opinion about reasonable care rather than per se violation theory.
Connecting Speed to Nuclear Verdict Risk
Speed is a key ingredient in the nuclear verdict calculus that has defined commercial trucking litigation since roughly 2020. Juries that see telematics data showing a 45-ton truck traveling at high speed through a congested area respond to the mechanical indifference of the carrier's speed management failure. The withdrawal of the federal mandate does not eliminate this narrative; if anything, it strengthens it, because plaintiff counsel can now argue that the carrier chose not to govern its trucks to a safe speed even as FMCSA was considering requiring it, making the carrier's speed policy a matter of deliberate choice rather than regulatory compliance.
For how speed evidence intersects with bad corporate conduct arguments and the broader nuclear verdict strategy in commercial trucking cases, the case law and settlements section covers recent verdict analysis and the doctrinal framework that supports punitive damages claims in trucking crash litigation.