FMCSA responds to criticism of NAFTA pilot program
The Trucker News Services
3/15/2007
FMCSA responds to criticism of NAFTA pilot program
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation’s announcement in February of a pilot program to allow 100 approved Mexican carriers beyond the narrow, close-to-the-border trade zones has predictably sparked heated response. Recently John Hill, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), responded to some of the criticism.
Hill said under the pilot program, a Mexican driver must pass a medical exam administered by an agency within the SCT (Mexico’s equivalent of DOT), provide proof of residence, proof of age, provide a certificate of secondary education to prove he or she has studied English, and provide a driver training certificate performed by a SCT-accredited training center. If a training certificate isn’t provided, the SCT will administer testing, he said.
No Mexican carriers will be allowed to carry hazardous materials as part of the pilot program, he told The Trucker. Also, he said they will not be making domestic deliveries within the U.S.
Included in the concerns of groups critical of the pilot program are that Mexico doesn’t have Hours of Service (HOS) rules in place. They fear U.S. inspectors will have no way of knowing how long Mexican truckers have been driving prior to crossing into the U.S.
Hill told The Trucker that although Mexico doesn’t have specific HOS rules, “Mexico’s labor laws limit the number of hours the driver can drive/work.”
But some groups aren’t convinced.
“DOT has maintained for at least a decade that the licenses used in Mexico to drive trucks are the equivalent of the American CDL [but] that’s never been true,” said OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer in a news release. “There is simply no way anyone can know whether a truck driver coming from Mexico entering the United States has been awake two hours or two weeks when they clear the border.”
“U.S. inspectors will utilize the same inspection process on Mexican drivers as they apply to U.S. drivers,” Hill said. “Like U.S. drivers, Mexican drivers are required to maintain the previous seven days of records for verification of HOS. Like U.S. drivers, when a Mexican driver is inspected upon entering they must possess the required records or they will be placed out of service.”
A news release from Public Citizen and other safety groups stated that many “benchmarks of safety” had not been met according to a 2005 DOT Inspector General’s report.
Hill countered that the 2005 report made recommendations to FMCSA to close “gaps,” but that “nowhere did the audit indicate failure and in fact, the report cites substantial compliance with all the section’s 350 provisions subject to their review.”
He said “all of those gaps have been closed, including procedures to audit Mexican trucking companies to determine safety management quality and certification of random drug and alcohol testing. This is part of our Pre-Authority Safety Audit that we announced … in Mexico.”
Spencer also was concerned that the only data that can be accessed when U.S. officials run checks on a Mexican CDL will be “that of previous operation in the U.S., not Mexico, where a driver might have a rap sheet as long as your arm.”
Hill said that Mexico maintains a license database where “convictions of violations while operating personal vehicles and commercial vehicles are entered into the driver’s record.”
He said “a driver whom the Mexican company intends to use to drive long-haul in the U.S. will be subject to a driving history check as a requirement for qualification.”
For the complete story, see the March 15 print edition of The Trucker.
— Dorothy Cox,
The Trucker Staff
