Proposed Federal Program Will Screen Truck Drivers for Safety

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) enforces many federal rules governing commercial truck and bus safety, and experienced Kentucky truck accident attorneys tend to listen closely when the agency proposes a new safety program as it did recently with its Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) program.

The Safety Fitness Determination program is intended to help fulfill the agency’s responsibility to examine truck and bus driver safety and to handle violations of safety rules under its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program, according to the FMCSA. The agency plans to implement the program in a nine-year process that starts from scratch while continuing to implement current driver safety rules during this time.

In year one, the FMCSA plans to conduct a feasibility study for the SFD program and create a system of weighing violations from least to most severe with consequences appropriate to each. In the following years, the FMCSA will develop rules for the program and test their enforcement to ensure they work effectively to prevent and catch risky driver behaviors. In the seventh year, the FMCSA will create a Final Rule for the program based on its research and on comments gathered in the notice and comment process, which uses publication in the Federal Register to notify interested parties of the details of the proposed rules.

Finally, the FMCSA will launch an education program to train both government officials and trucking companies on how to implement the new rules and roll out the final version of the rule. These steps are expected to take place in the final two years of the process.