Coalition Says Standards Should Include On-Road Training

coalition of safety and driver interest groups told a federal appeals court last week that training standards for new commercial drivers are inadequate because they do not require on-road training.

In arguments Sept. 19 before the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, an alliance of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety said the driver-training rule should have included behind-the-wheel training.

“The record showed that current levels of training are not adequate to ensure that drivers actually know how to operate a truck,” said Adina Rosenbaum, an attorney with the Public Citizen litigation group, which represented the Advocates in its challenge. “We think adequate training has to include training in the actual operation of a truck.”