FMCSA Will Not Issue Driver Health Rules Until Next Year, Administrator Ferro Says

This story appears in the Nov. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

BALTIMORE — New regulations from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that are focused specifically on trucker health standards will have to wait until next year, Administrator Anne Ferro said.

The timing of rules concerning sleep apnea programs and medical examiners is being pushed back to 2011 because the agency is finishing work first on its new hours-of-service proposal and the CSA safety ratings program.

The HOS rules are due before November ends, and the agency is moving toward disclosure of carrier safety data for public review as early as Nov. 30, Ferro said. That disclosure is the latest step in rolling out the CSA program that is slated to be fully in force in 2011.

“Those [medical examiner rules] will be issued early next year after the agency completes work on the hours-of-service rule,” Ferro said at the International Conference on Commercial Driver Health and Wellness here.

FMCSA and the Transportation Research Board sponsored the two-day event.

Ferro said the agency is taking an active role in other respects on the issue of sleep apnea, a condition that affects an estimated 14% of truck drivers.

Specifically, the agency is doing controlled studies of drivers’ sleep patterns to gauge the effect of split sleep for team drivers, she said.

The rules related to medical examinations also will address vision, respiratory disease and diabetes standards, as well as sleep apnea, the administrator said.

“Down the road, there will be radical changes in the medical requirements to be sure that we are minimizing the risk,” she said, without giving any details on the agency’s plans.

Earlier this year, Mary Gunnels, who heads the FMCSA’s medical programs office, said at another sleep conference that the agency intended to issue the examiner rules this year (click here for previous story).

As she disclosed the currently planned schedule, Ferro underlined the agency’s commitment to addressing issues relating to driver health.

She called the conference last week “a discussion that had to happen” and described the fact that truck drivers die 16 years earlier than the average American as a “startling, frightening and untenable situation.”

A key issue to address as the new medical rules are written is validating the accuracy of required biennial physical examinations that are done by physicians approved by the Transportation Department, Ferro said.

“There is a lot of fraud in that particular tool,” she said. “There needs to be a lot of monitoring of the validity.”

She said the agency is developing programs to close a loophole that is tied to submitting the reports on paper by requiring certified medical examiners to submit reports electronically.

While noting that most drivers and examiners submit proper reports, Ferro said, “there is an element of fraud that enables folks who are on the road to continue driving.”