Fine-Tuned Drug Testing Requested

American Trucking Associations is seeking the support of the head of the nation’s anti-drug program for changes in truck driver drug-testing laws.

ATA wants to allow motor carriers to base random drug testing rates on their own company’s performance rather than on industry-wide performance. The association plans to petition the Federal Highway Administration to conduct a pilot study on the proposal.

Motor carriers randomly test half of their drivers annually. FHWA regulations allow the agency to reduce the random testing rate to 25% if the industry-wide violation rate is below 1% for two consecutive years. The 1997 industry-wide violation rate was 2.2 %, down from 2.8% in 1996. In 1995, the first year that FHWA collected data for large carriers, the rate was 2.6%.

“This regulatory approach is intended to motivate ‘good’ companies to pressure ‘bad’ companies to improve,” ATA President Walter B. McCormick Jr. wrote in a Dec. 16 letter to Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“However, good companies have no way of identifying the bad companies to pressure them to improve,” Mr. McCormick continued. “As a result, companies with low violation rates spend valuable safety resources on potentially excessive random testing and have little incentive to improve their own violation rates. A company-based performance approach could provide a better incentive for motor carriers to make greater efforts in their safety programs in order to reduce their own positive rates.”

ATA also wants to allow a positive drug test to be reported to state motor vehicle agencies for posting on the driver’s commercial drivers license record. Notice of a positive test is currently forwarded by the medical review officer to the employer, who is responsible for taking the driver out of service, getting the driver evaluated by a substance abuse professional and obtaining a return-to-duty test with a negative result.

For the full story, see the Dec. 28 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.