§21102 Nonapplication, Exemption, and Alternate Hours of Service Regime

Summary

The chapter does not apply when an employee is kept from work by a casualty, an unavoidable accident, an act of God, or by a delay that the railroad and the officer in charge could not foresee when the employee left a terminal. The Secretary of Transportation can exempt a railroad with no more than 15 employees covered by this chapter. The Secretary must hold a full hearing, find good cause, and decide the exemption is in the public interest and won’t hurt safety. Any exemption is for a set time, reviewed at least yearly, and cannot let employees be on duty more than 16 hours in any 24-hour period. For commuter and intercity passenger trains, duty-hour limits follow the old version of section 21103 until either the Department’s regulations under section 21109(b) take effect or until 3 years after the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 was enacted, whichever comes first. After that, the amended (new) section 21103 applies unless the Department’s regulations take effect; if those regulations do take effect, the regulations control and carriers are exempt from both the old and new section 21103. "Old section 21103" means the rule as it stood before the 2008 Act. "New section 21103" means the rule as changed by the 2008 Act. The terms "commuter rail passenger transportation" and "intercity rail passenger transportation" use the meanings in section 24102.