Driver-Training Panel Reaches Midway Point With Many Critical Issues Still Unresolved

This story appears in the April 20 print edition of Transport Topics.

Though halfway through its scheduled meetings to standardize training regulations for entry-level truck drivers, a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration advisory panel still is identifying issues for discussion despite its May 29 deadline.

The 26-member committee met April 9-10 in Arlington, Virginia, and plowed through complicated issues on curriculum, hazardous materials and school certification. But so far, it has not given any firm endorsements to suggestions arising from multiple working groups or subcommittees.

“This was very much a draft report from 50,000 feet up,” said committee member Peter Kurdock, referring to a document from the panel’s core curriculum working group.

“Nothing is finalized yet,” said Kurdock, the director of regulatory affairs for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.

The FMCSA committee members have been asked to try for consensus on what should be in a rule setting training standards for people who are about to test for a commercial driver license. The federal government has been trying to develop such a rule since 1985.

The most recent pair of meetings was the third out of six pairs. The next is set for April 23-24.

Kurdock is chairman of a working group of 10 to 15 members that will provide a suggestion for the whole committee on the definition of an entry-level driver. He said the group is deliberating on what to do with CDL holders who have let the credential lapse for a period of years.

“If you leave driving to hang dry wall for five years, but then come back to it after an economic shift, your training will have atrophied,” Kurdock said.

The working group’s challenge, he said, is to enumerate conditions for those who would need just a refresher course and those who would have to repeat all of entry-level training.

Kurdock said his curriculum group will meet via conference call before the next full committee meeting and that he also is looking for advice and current standards from state motor-vehicle administrators.

Boyd Stephenson of American Trucking Associations presented a report on the intricacies of hazardous materials rules. Drivers hauling hazmat need an endorsement for their CDLs.

“We shared our recommendations with the committee at large,” said Stephenson, ATA’s director of hazardous materials and licensing policy.

Stephenson said his group’s three main questions are: What to do about tank trucks? How will the training be done? And what should the committee do with rules set by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration? PHMSA and FMCSA are parts of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

CDL endorsements are a mixed area for the committee, Stephenson said, because in 2012 Congress told FMCSA to devise a standard for three of the five CDL endorsements: hazardous materials, passenger buses and school buses. In the MAP-21 highway funding bill, which ordered a driver-training rule, Congress was silent on the endorsements for tank trucks and combination vehicles such as double and triple rigs. Further complicating the discussion is that while tank trucks often transport hazmat such as gasoline and chemicals, they also can move water, milk or sand. In addition, not all hazmat move in tanks. Some run in dry or refrigerated vans.

“We did not get to a final decision,” Stephenson said.

He predicted hazmat knowledge probably would be checked by a written test rather than a field exam with a truck. The five major knowledge areas the group proposed were hazmat definitions and identification, communications requirements, operations requirements, routing and planning procedures and safety permitting.

The core curriculum working group filed a detailed proposal with seven major areas of study, each with numerous subsections.

The seven major areas are theory, safe operating procedures, advanced operating practices, vehicle systems and malfunction reporting, nonvehicle activities, driving range or closed-course training, and public road training. Examples include parallel parking, backing into a loading dock, railroad crossings, night driving, hours-of-service rule compliance, and safety reporting under FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.

FMCSA was asked for comment on the meeting but was unable to reply by press time.

The committee is supposed to file a final report in June.

But if necessary, the deadline may be extended beyond May.

Kurdock said the committee is advancing, even if slowly.

“We’re definitely making progress,” he said. “We want the best rule for the best safety outcome we can get, and I think we’re headed in that direction.”