DOT to Let Fleets See Records Of Driver Applicants for 1st Time
This story appears in the Oct. 12 print edition of Transport Topics.
LAS VEGAS — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it will allow carriers to look at parts of the driving records of prospective employees, the first time fleets will be allowed such access.
Acting FMCSA Administrator Rose McMurray told the American Trucking Associations board of directors that the agency would launch its pre-employment screening program “by the end of this year.”
“This is something that the industry has been asking us to undertake for a number of years,” she said Oct. 7.
The move will allow fleets to examine inspection and crash reports involving prospective employees for the first time.
McMurray announced the policy as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood praised the program by saying it would “help trucking companies ensure the safest drivers are behind the wheel of commercial trucks and buses.”
“Making this information more transparent will make our roads and highways safer for everyone,” he said.
Under the program, companies will be allowed to search driver inspection and crash records in December, provided drivers “give written consent for those records to be released,” McMurray said.
Currently, the records are available only to federal and state law enforcement personnel and drivers who file a Freedom of Information Act request.
Given that drivers need to consent to allowing access to their records, McMurray said, carriers would need to weigh their possible refusal in the hiring process.
“If a driver does not permit companies to access his driving records, it should be a red flag that perhaps you need to question if you really want this person driving for your company,” she said.
Fleet executives hailed the announcement.
“This database is what we’ve needed and begged for,” said Barbara Windsor, president of Hahn Transportation.
“The way the system has historically worked, is there have been ample places for bad drivers to hide,” said Don Osterberg, vice president of safety and driver training for Schneider National Inc. He said, “It’s been challenging for carriers to identify problematic drivers through the normal pre-hire process.”
Windsor, who guided ATA’s safety task force, said the database issue was one that was “talked about a lot in the safety task force. We think [these records] are very essential.”
Currently, Windsor said, carriers must ask drivers’ permission to ask previous employers about their history, so giving consent to look at the records electronically will become “mandatory.”
Osterberg said he thought the database could be a step toward the establishment of another database ATA and other industry groups have pushed for: a clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results.
“A national clearinghouse for positive drug and alcohol tests is essential,” he said. “I think this a precursor to even a broader application of that. It enables us to know what we would want to know.”
Windsor emphasized the importance of establishing a drug testing database.
“We could put someone in a truck, which I did, that had tested positive at another company. . . . Once we found out, obviously, we had to terminate the person,” she said.
McMurray told Transport Topics the agency was “working on developing what a data system would look like for capturing failed drug tests. She said that information “should be made available,” but that the possible creation of such a system could be “months away.”
