ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration asked its advisory committee Monday to help it work through various issues it has encountered in crafting minimum training requirements for entry-level commercial drivers, including classroom and on-the-road instruction.
The agency proposed such requirements five years ago, but comments it received on the proposal brought up issues with the details of the curriculum, how FMCSA would accredit training programs, the effect the regulation would have on the supply of drivers and the benefits of the training compared with the costs, said Rich Clemente, a transportation specialist at FMCSA.
“Is a trained driver a safer driver? We would certainly like to think so, and that’s why we’ve been working on this,” Clemente said in a presentation Monday to the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee. “But right now, there is currently no federal standard.”
Federal officials have been working on entry-level driver training standards for about two decades, and issued a regulation in 2003. But a federal court later told FMCSA the standards must include on-the-road training, since the agency determined that such training is necessary for safety.
That resulted in the 2007 proposal, which the agency has not acted on since then. “We’re coming up on the 5-year anniversary of the notice of proposed rulemaking,” Clemente said. “It’s been a long time.”
