Attn: Transportation reporters, editorial writers
There’s a 9.3% chance that the driver behind the wheel of the semi-trailer or school bus in your rearview mirror suffers from a health condition that qualifies him or her for disability benefits. The estimate is drawn from a report and testimony that was offered last week to a House subcommittee.
Rose A. McMurray, the chief safety officer at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation bureaucracy, said in a prepared statement that there are approximately 6 million commercial vehicle drivers who are supposed to have their medical examinations renewed every two years.
The Government Accountability Office recently compared the commercial driver license holders from four states whose names and addresses were found in the FMCSA’s database, and compared them against disability recipients whose names and addresses are found in databases maintained by the Social Security Administration, the Veterans’ Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor.
According to the GAO’s report, as many as 563,000 truck and school bus drivers–approximately 9% of the total 6 million with commercial driver licenses–have medical conditions that qualify them for disability benefits.
Being disabled doesn’t necessarily disqualify someone from operating a truck or school bus. But it’s a determination that should be made on a case-by-case basis by a competent medical examiner.
Enforcement of FMCSA’s medical examination requirement varies among different states, and the federal agency has been slow to implement recommendations that were made several years ago to improve its enforcement capabilities, the GAO said.
“Most states do not require commercial drivers to provide medical certifications to be issued a commercial driver license. Instead, many states only require individuals to self-certify that a medical examiner granted them a medical certification allowing them to operate commercial vehicles, thus meeting the minimum federal requirements. As a result, we found several commercial drivers who made false assertions on their self-certification that they received a medical certification when in fact no certification was made,” the GAO said in its report.
The GAO interviewed some truck and bus drivers to illustrate the report’s findings with anecdotal examples, and mentioned these “worst case” scenarios:
* In Maryland, a bus driver who collects Social Security disability benefits due to an aneurysm of the aorta and valvular heart disease used a forged medical certificate to renew his state bus driver’s license.
* In Florida, a substitute school bus driver continues to be hired even though he has been receiving Social Security disability benefits since 1994 for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) and uses three inhalers each day to assist his breathing.
* In Minnesota, a bus driver who receives Social Security disability benefits for epilepsy told his GAO interviewer that a medical examiner approved him despite FMCSA rules against approving a commercial driver license for persons who take anti-seizure medications. The driver said that he and the medical examiner agreed that he should not drive a commercial vehicle whenever he felt “loopy.”
In her testimony, McMurray claimed credit for “a rigorous enforcement program” that the FMCSA conducts with state and local traffic and licensing authorities.
“In 2007,” she said, “FMCSA and its state partners conducted more than 3 million roadside inspections…more than 145,000 citations were issued to drivers who did not possess their medical certificates and more than 42,000 citations to drivers with expired medical certificates.”
House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) was not impressed by McMurray’s testimony.
“Tragically,” Oberstar said citing a committee staff memo, “we have made little progress in the number of deaths from crashes involving large trucks since FMCSA’s (1999) founding. In 2006, 4,995 individuals were killed. In 2007, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that ‘heart attack or other physical impairment’ was a critical factor in approximately 4,000 serious truck crashes.”
Oberstar said the National Transportation Safety Board made eight recommendations for improving FMCSA’s performance, but the agency’s efforts to implement them have been “grudging and painfully slow.” He noted that a 1999 law ordered FMCSA to merge its drivers’ medical certification data with its commercial driver license data. “That was nearly 10 years ago and still we have no final rule,” Oberstar said.
–EZ
