Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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LEADING NEWS, TRUCKING MARKET CONDITIONS AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS Congress clarifies restart regulations, ATA says fix is permanent T he American Trucking Associations said last month's 2017 government funding bill that secured the 34-hour restart's future effectively permanently removes the requirement that truckers include two 1-5 a.m. periods in a 34-hour restart. The law also perma - nently removes the once-a-week limit of the restart's use, ATA said. However, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration spokes - person Duane DeBruyne said the agency will follow the directions set by Congress in the 2017 appropria - tions bill, meaning the results of a pending FMCSA study will dictate whether those 2013-implemented regulations will come back to life. DeBruyne said the report is still under departmental review. Truckers now are operating as they have since December 2014, meaning 34-hour restarts do not need to include two 1-5 a.m. peri - ods, and the 34-hour restart option can be used as often as they like. ATA said the appropriations bill's wording set the standards for the study too high for its conclusions to allow the 2013-implemented regu - lations to be reenacted. "The language in the C.R. requires that DOT's study of the restart demonstrate 'statistically significant improvement in all out - comes related to safety, operator fatigue, driver health and longevity and work schedules,' which we have been told it cannot do," ATA told CCJ. "This is a permanent reso - lution to this issue." – James Jaillet Driver drug and alcohol test database use to be required by 2020 B eginning Jan. 6, 2020, carriers will be required to report infor- mation about positive drug test results, test refusals, failed alcohol tests and more by drivers to a federal database. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Dec. 5 published a final rule to establish the Commercial Driver's License Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, a long-underway database of positive commercial driver drug and alcohol test results. The Clearinghouse will be under the agency's administration, in collaboration with a third party, and will contain information about violations of FMCSA's drug and alcohol testing program. The compliance date for the rule is Jan. 6, 2020. The rule, mandated by the MAP-21 highway bill in 2012, will improve roadway safety, FMCSA says, by preventing any driver's ability to conceal "drug and alcohol violations merely by moving on to the next job or the next jurisdiction" without completing the return-to-duty process. Current return-to-duty rules require employers to furnish drivers with a list of potential referrals for completing a rehabilitation program with a substance abuse professional meeting U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines. Affected drivers must complete the program and retest before returning to work with any employer. The Clearinghouse database will reflect such completions, and records will follow every affected driver regardless of how many times he or she changes employers, seeks employment or applies for a CDL in a different state, FMCSA says. Employers and medical review officers, including testing consortiums used by many independent owner-operators, will be required to report information about positive drug test results, alcohol test results greater than 0.04 blood alcohol con- tent, refusals to test and other non-test violations of FMCSA's drug and alcohol regulations to the database. Substance abuse professionals working with drivers on return-to-duty rehabilitation also will be required to report information about the rehabilitation process to the database. The rule also requires employers to search the Clearinghouse database for information during the pre-employment process and at least once a year for current employees. – Todd Dills Scan the QR code with your smartphone or visit ccjdigital.com/ news/subscribe-to- newsletters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newslet- ter filled with news, analysis, blogs and market condition articles. commercial carrier journal | january 2017 11 The CDL Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse rule requires carriers to submit positive tests and refusals to the database.