Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/221538
Logbook Carrier alliance wants hair testing approved Prompted by trucking interests, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) introduced legislation that would allow hair testing to be used for driver screening. Companion bills introduced in the Senate and House direct the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to recognize hair testing as an optional method to comply with U.S. Department of Transportation drug testing requirements for truck drivers. Under current federal regulations, only urinalysis is recognized by HHS for mandatory pre-employment drug and alcohol exams. However, the number of truck driver applicants who pass a pre-employment urine test but fail a subsequent hair test is high, according to the Washington, D.C.based Alliance for Driver Safety & Security, also known as The Trucking Alliance. For that reason, many trucking companies have turned to hair testing, which is more expensive but is more effective in identifying drug users who apply for jobs as truck drivers. "Passing this much-needed legislation will give trucking companies the option of conducting either a urinalysis or a hair test or both methods and will also allow positive hair tests to be reported to the soon-to-be-created national drug and alcohol clearinghouse that Congress adopted last year," said Gary Salisbury, a member of the Trucking Alliance board of directors and current chairman of the Arkansas Trucking Association. Congress mandated the creation of a drug and alcohol clearinghouse last year, and DOT is expected to have it operational by next year. This database will identify any person who previously has tested positive on a pre- NTSB questions FMCSA's oversight of motor carriers, calls for audit of agency The National Transportation Safety Board last month recommended to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration be audited on its oversight of trucking companies. NTSB said its findings "raise serious questions about the oversight of motor carrier operations" and come in response to investigations within the past year into four accidents in which collectively 25 people were killed and 83 more injured. Two of the incidents were truck wrecks and two were motorcoach wrecks. In all but one motorcoach accident, the drivers violated hours of service. In all four accidents, NTSB investigators said "red flags had been present prior to the crashes," but the warnings were either not noticed or not acted upon by FMCSA. NTSB said its investigations raised issues about both FMCSA's "thoroughness and quality" of compliance reviews. NTSB also questioned the agency's "increasing reliance on focused compliance reviews," in which the focus is limited to a narrow portion of a carrier's operation. "Our investigators found that, in many cases, the poor performing company was on FMCSA's radar for violations, but was allowed to continue operating and was not scrutinized closely until they had deadly crashes," said NTSB Unless the law changes, a hair test for illegal drugs, such as marijuana, cannot be submitted to the forthcoming national driver database. employment drug exam required by the federal government before being employed as a truck driver. However, unless HHS recognizes hair testing as an approved methodology, no positive hair test results can be submitted to the national clearinghouse database. – Kevin Jones Chairman Deborah Hersman. A prepared statement from FMCSA said each year it has increased the number of carriers it has shut down for unsafe practices, and that in 2012 it shut down 47 carriers compared to just 10 in 2011. "We are continuously looking for new ways to make our investigation methods even more effective so we shut down unsafe companies before a crash occurs, and we will thoroughly review the NTSB's findings," FMCSA said. The American Trucking Associations said NTSB's findings reinforce the need for FMCSA to improve its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program to better target carriers that have high crash risk. Bill Graves, ATA president and chief executive officer, said the findings also reinforce the need for an electronic log mandate. – James Jaillet 14 | Overdrive | December 2013 Logbook_1213.indd 14 11/26/13 10:26 PM