Oberstar Blasts FMCSA for Slow Pace on Drivers’ Medical Certifications
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the Aug. 4 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
WASHINGTON — On the heels of a report criticizing the federal government’s efforts to ensure that truck drivers are medically qualified, the House transportation committee’s chairman blasted the top truck safety agency for not living up to its mission and for dragging its feet on the health issue.
Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, laid into the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for not moving fast enough to implement congressional mandates or recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board.
“It shouldn’t take you eight years. It shouldn’t take you five years. Or three years,” Oberstar said during a July 24 hearing by the committee. “People’s lives are at stake, and they are depending on you and your colleagues. We’ve given you a half-billion dollar [annual] budget, practically, to do this. There is no excuse for foot-dragging.”
Oberstar’s comments were in response to a Government Accountability Office report that said hundreds of thousands of drivers have potentially serious medical conditions, some significant enough to prevent them from driving a truck (7-28, p. 1; click here for previous Premium Content story).
During the hearing, Rose McMurray, FMCSA’s chief safety officer, defended the agency’s work on driver health issues, telling the committee the agency was committed to completing rules later this year that would address most of NTSB’s recommendations.
“Four of the NTSB’s eight most-wanted recommendations will be addressed by the medical certification and national registry rules,” she said, adding that the remaining recommendations would be addressed by the agency’s medical review board.
Physician and NTSB Medical Officer Mitchell Garber said at the hearing that the board recommended in 2001 that FMCSA make eight changes to its medical standards, including certifying medical examiners, tracking applications, certifications and ensuring that enforcement officers can confirm a driver’s medical fitness at roadside.
Garber said FMCSA’s reaction to the recommendations was “positive, in terms of agreeing that action is necessary.”
“What the board has been challenged by is the failure to observe any actual changes in the system as it exists,” he said, “and by the repeated dates and targets that have been passed for completing certain aspects.”
Garber said NTSB was not surprised by the GAO’s report: “Their findings mirror our own.”
McMurray, however, said that FMCSA took issue with the GAO’s report, telling the panel that it presented a skewed view of the medical program.
“This particular report paints a picture that isn’t representative of the state of medical fitness for commercial drivers throughout the United States,” she said, adding that the 15 case studies GAO presented were not a sufficient sample from which to draw conclusions.
The top Republican on the committee’s panel on highways, Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.), also questioned the GAO’s conclusions.
“I am concerned this report will be seen by some to imply a broader problem in the CDL population,” he said. “In fact, the report makes it clear that these 15 cases are not representative of the commercial driver population.”
Oberstar was unconvinced and pointed to a report by the transportation committee’s staff that also noted issues with the medical certification program.
“Staff got 600 medical cards from drivers at truck weigh stations, and they tried to verify [them] with the medical examiners who issued the card, [or] allegedly issued the card,” he said. “The report documents 30 cases — 5% — where the medical examiner didn’t exist, or the medical examiner indicated that the signature of that person had been forged or changed.”
Oberstar, as well as Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the chairman of the highways subcommittee, pressed McMurray to explain why the agency has taken so long with its medical rules, which she said have been “difficult to develop.”
DeFazio asked McMurray if the agency had the resources to complete the rules, but she answered that it wasn’t a “matter of resources, as much as it is a problem of expertise.”
McMurray also said that “other rulemakings” have taken priority over the medical rules, but without specifying which ones.
The rules are also complicated by cost issues, she said, telling Oberstar they are “a significant burden on states.”
That burden, McMurray said, comes in costs to upgrade information technology to handle new databases and new training requirements for enforcement officers and medical examiners.
“The sheer size of the driver population will require thousands of certified medical examiners to evaluate drivers,” she said.
Oberstar, however, said the agency lacked “a safety mindset,” and, if it had one, “you would have done this in the last eight years.”
“What we need is will — and willpower — at the highest levels,” he said. “And it is apparent there isn’t that will at the level of the secretary of Transportation and permeates all the way down through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.”
