2014 Medical Changes, CSA to Reflect Court Ticket Decisions, Guidance on Rest Break Requirement

A change affecting the medical examiner’s certificate was going to take place on January 30th. Under the provision drivers would no longer be required to carry a copy of their certificate. Due to problems some states have with implementing this program the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has postponed the effective date until January 30, 2015. Until that date drivers must retain paper copies of their medical examiner’s certificate and motor carriers are also required to retain copies of their drivers’ medical certificates in their driver qualification files.

This rule does not, however, extend the compliance dates for the state driver’s license agencies to collect and to post to the CDLIS driver record the CDL holder’s self-certification about applicable standards and the medical examiner’s certificate. That must be completed by January 30, 2014.

Effective May 21, 2014:

Physicals can only be completed by examiners who are on the National Registry of Certified Medical Eaminers. It is the responsibility of the motor carrier to verify that the medical examiner who conducted the examination is listed in the Registry. Physicals completed prior to May 21st are valid until their expiration date, even if the examiner is not in the Registry.

Faced with several lawsuits and the promise of more to come if they were successful, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Adminsitration (FMCSA) has decided to take action. At issue is whether or not CSA data should reflect the adjudicated result of a state citation. In simpler terms, if a driver is issued a ticket during a roadside inspection, should that ticket be removed from the record if the driver is later found not–guilty in court? While the common sense answer would be “yes”, in reality states often took no action to remove the information, even if requested by the driver. At issue is the current guidance from FMCSA that talks about how to handle the situation:

This information is guidance and not regulatory in nature and specifies that the states exercise “discretion”. As a result, some states will remove tickets after the driver is found not–guilty while others will not. To remedy this situation FMCSA will be publishing a notice of proposed rulemaking which will define the action that states must take and also the changes that must be made to the database to accommodate updating the status of tickets that have been adjudicated.

The comment period for this upcoming regulation has just closed. FMCSA will now consider the comments and draft the final regulation which will then be published as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. With luck that will occur later this year but there’s no guarantee things will move that fast. FMCSA did make the point that once the regulation is in effect it will not be retroactive, but will only apply to tickets written after the rule’s effective date. The states did not want to have to contend with a deluge of requests to modify existing records.FMCSA is proposing that after adjudication the results will be recorded in one of three ways:

This will be a welcome change that will result in a positive improvement to the CSA program. Hopefully FMCSA will stay the course and take action to include preventability rulings as part of CSA’s crash data.

This year’s hours of service changes included adding a provision that drivers take at least a 30 minute break after 8 hours. However, short haul drivers are exempt from doing that. That’s fine as long as the driver remains eligible for the short haul exemption throughout the entire day. But, what happens if the driver exceeds either 12 hours or travels further than 100 miles from the terminal? FMCSA has released guidance on how to handle that situation.

The driver is then subject to the break requirement and must prepare a log for the day. The intent of the break rule would be satisfied if drivers in these situations take a break at the earliest safe opportunity and explain in the remarks section on the log why the rest break was not taken within the required 8 hours. This action should be taken as soon as the driver becomes aware they will exceed either the time or distance limits for the short haul exemption.