Oberstar hammers FMCSA on driver fitness
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar said he was “impatient” with FMCSA because the agency has made little progress in beefing up medical oversight of commercial drivers.
By Kevin Jones
The Trucker Staff
7/25/2008
WASHINGTON — Note to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: Don’t mess around with Jim.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar opened Thursday’s hearing on the medical oversight of commercial drivers by rebuking FMCSA Administrator John Hill for his absence and closed with sharp criticism of the leadership of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters. In between, FMCSA Assistant Administrator and Chief Safety Officer Rose McMurray spent a couple of hours on what likely was the hottest seat on Capitol Hill.
“Why has it taken eight years to get to this point?” an increasingly exasperated Oberstar said late in the hearing. He was referring to the FMCSA’s lack of progress in implementing rules to ensure unfit drivers can’t get behind the wheel. “We expected better of you.”
“These rules are very complicated,” McMurray replied, and explained that the agency has had to consider implementation costs for the states, including changes to computer systems, additional staffing, and training for law enforcement and medical examiners. “We have to think about unintended consequences.”
“I think if your agency had a safety mindset you’d have done this in less than eight years. I’m telling you that, I’m not asking you anymore,” Oberstar interjected, and said that given the current size of the FMCSA’s budget, the agency shouldn’t lack the resources. “What’s lacking is will — will to tackle the issue, and realize that every time there’s an accident out there, there’s a fatality, that’s got to be on your conscience.”
The hearing, delayed for two hours as Oberstar successfully guided a floor vote on a bridge inspection bill, featured critical assessments by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Government Accountability Office, whose findings prompted an Associated Press story Monday, as well as the committee’s own report.
“I can tell you that it is actually unusual in our accident investigations to find a commercial driver for whom there are not at least some questions regarding medical certification,” testified Dr. Mitchell Garber, medical officer for the NTSB.
And it’s not that the medical conditions always cause the accident, or — if properly treated and monitored — would prevent a driver from safely operating a commercial vehicle. The problem, simply, is that “because of a wide variety of deficiencies in the oversight of commercial driver medical certification, no such evaluation, treatment, or monitoring occurred in many of the cases we investigated,” Garber said.
Commercial vehicle accident investigations prompted NTSB in 2001 to issue eight recommendations for the FMCSA to develop a medical oversight program. Lack of progress in implementing the recommendations prompted NTSB to place the issue of medical oversight on the board’s “most wanted list” of safety improvements in 2003.
“It is not that the current system is broken so much as that no viable system of medical oversight of commercial drivers currently exists,” Garber’s testimony concluded.
The problem, as driven home by Oberstar during questioning, is that FMCSA still has made little if any progress in putting those recommendations in place.
McMurray said the agency has proposed one rule and is close to proposing another to address two of the recommendations — to merge the licensing and medical certification of commercial drivers, and to create a national registry of examiners approved to issue medical certificates — and has made progress on two other recommendations. However, she said it will be about three years before progress is evident on the remaining recommendations.
It’s not that drivers aren’t being checked, McMurray noted. In 2006, 145,000 citations were issued for drivers not having a medical card on hand during roadside inspections, and another 42,000 for drivers with expired certifications, she said.
Which is exactly why the medical certification measures should beefed up, GAO’s Gregory Kutz responded, and referred to an example of Michigan’s CDL application which allows applicants to “self-certify” by simply checking a box stating they’ve been medically cleared to drive.
“These people, when they apply for these licenses, they pay a fee,” Kutz said. “How many people would actually check ‘no’?”
Carriers are required to verify that drivers have a medical certificate, McMurray quickly pointed out, but admitted that “doctor shopping” remains a potential problem.
Oberstar, backed by responses from the NTSB and GAO representatives, said that self-certifications simply shouldn’t be allowed by FMCSA.
“There’s no public benefit to be gained,” he said, then pointedly denied McMurray a chance to respond.
Explaining that the FMCSA was created with safety as its top priority, Oberstar said he was “impatient” with the agency.
“People’s lives are at stake, depending on you and your colleagues. We’ve given you a half billion dollar budget to do this. There is no excuse for foot dragging and the lives lost, the lives disrupted, the families that grieve,” Oberstar said. “What we need is willpower at the highest level. It’s apparent there isn’t that will at the level of the secretary of transportation, and that permeates all the way down through the FMCSA.”
Oberstar then concluded, with emphasis, “We will watch you carefully.”