Earlier this month, a federal drug testing advisory board voted unanimously to recommend the  development of drug testing guidelines by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).  The guidelines will define the use of saliva testing as an alternative method of identifying drug use among federal employees.  Click here to view the Federal Register.

CVSA’s recent Roadcheck 2011, an annual, three-day vehicle safety enforcement campaign, showed that maintenance and safety are continuing to improve in the commercial motor carrier and motor coach industries, as overall out-of-service (OOS) rates are at their lowest since the campaign’s inception.

Nearly 8,000 CVSA and FMCSA certified inspectors performed over 70,000 truck and bus inspections over the three day span.  On average, 16 trucks or buses were inspected every minute for the 72 hours of the event.

Inspectors focused primarily on four inspections: the North American Standard (NAS) Level I inspection, motorcoach inspections, hours of service logbooks, and household goods carriers.

Hours of service logbook violations led overwhelmingly with 52.5% of all OOS violations. When inspectors surveyed drivers on their use of electronic logging devices, they found that 14% of drivers were using them.

While Roadcheck is an important, annual event, roadside inspections occur daily across North America. There were over 3.9 million in 2010 alone.

Below are a few highlighted results from 2010 and 2011:

The ATA recently issued a letter to its Safety Management Council clarifying  how to manage drug testing compliance for drivers who use Methylenedioxypyro-  valerone (MDPV).

Although MDPV is a stimulant that’s similar to cocaine, the drug currently is not a federally controlled substance, and drivers using MDPV are not in violation of the prohibitions under Part 382.  However, drivers using MDPV are medically unqualified to drive under Section 391.41(b)(12)(i), which requires that a driver:

Does not use a controlled substance identified in 21 CFR 1308.11      Schedule 1, an amphetamine, a narcotic, or any other habit-forming drug.

The ATA recommends that motor carriers send drivers using MDPV to a physician for a new DOT physical, “alerting the physician to the driver’s condition.  The physician will likely declare that the driver is not qualified until the driver can demonstrate that he is no longer using the substance.”  The Drug & Chemical Evaluation Section at DEA plans to temporarily place MDPV as a Schedule I controlled substance sometime in late summer.

To read the entire letter from the ATA regarding MDPV, click here.

To view a list of the 23 states that have banned MDPV, click here.

To view relevant steps in the handbook for medical examiners, click here.

Click here for more information.

According to a May 20 court filing, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will publish its revised hours-of-service rule by October 28, not by July 26 as originally planned.  The delay results from the FMCSA’s decision to reopen the comment period in order to allow the public time to review four studies the FMCSA added to its docket.  The reopened comment period will end on June 8.

Click here for more.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) today placed four additional research studies in the official rulemaking docket for the Hours-of-Service (HOS) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). The four studies are: The Impact of Driving, Non-Driving Work, and Rest Breaks on Driving Performance in Commercial Motor Vehicle Operations; Hours of Service and Driver Fatigue-Driver Characteristics Research; Analysis of the Relationship Between Operator Cumulative Driving Hours and Involvement in Preventable Collisions; and Potential Causes Of Driver Fatigue: A Study On Transit Bus Operators In Florida.

FMCSA is reopening the HOS NPRM comment period to allow for public review and discussion of these studies. As FMCSA is committed to receiving and analyzing all public comments on the studies before it completes its work on the final rule, the agency will extend the final rule publication date. FMCSA has advised parties to the settlement agreement of the need for an extended rulemaking schedule. The research studies are available on the FMCSA website at www.fmcsa.dot.gov or www.regulations.gov. For more information, contact Candice Tolliver at (202) 366-9999.

In a study released today, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) reveals that truck drivers with certain driving records (i.e. prior crashes, violations and convictions) are more susceptible to being involved in a future truck crash than their peers with clean driving records.  The analyses in the report draw on data from 582,772 U.S. truck drivers over a two-year time frame to expose a dozen driver behaviors that raise a driver’s risk of being involved in a truck crash by more than 50 percent.

Click here to view a summary of the ATRI study.