Since May of 2010, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has offered trucking companies access to their database of drivers' safety violations, as a pre-employment safety tool. But recently a former FMCSA administrator revealed in an interview that the agency is tracking the safety records of individual drivers more carefully than previously thought.
According to Annette Sandberg, who resigned as FMCSA Administrator in 2006 and now works as a trucking industry consultant, the agency closely tracks which drivers are responsible for certain "red flag" safety violations under commercial trucking laws. Although it is the companies who are responsible for the violations, the agency still tracks which driver was involved and keeps this data for three years-even if the driver moves to a different trucking company.
By tracking individual drivers and their safety records, the FMCSA's database allows trucking companies to screen out drivers with poor safety records before hiring, and also allows companies to determine which of their current drivers were involved with their previous safety violations.
Sandberg gave the example of a company with whom she consulted that discovered that 40 percent of its safety violations were attributable to just two drivers.
The FMCSA system, called CSA 2010, collects crash data and inspection reports to track seven safety areas, including unsafe driving such as texting while driving and drug and alcohol use by truck drivers.
This is likely good news for the majority of truckers and safe drivers on the nation's highways. Companies will likely pay close attention to their drivers with poor safety records, and will think twice before hiring anyone with a string of previous violations.
For anyone injured in an accident with a truck, this information may well prove invaluable in court, helping establish the trucking company's liability by showing it was aware of the driver's poor safety record.
