20-year battle over strengthening entry level truck driving training still runs hot

After 20 years, two congressional mandates and countless lawsuits and lobbying efforts, safety advocates and the Teamsters union still say there are too many inexperienced rookie truck drivers hitting the road without sufficient behind-the-wheel training.

So safety advocates and the union have filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia against the DOT and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the agency charged with issuing the rule. Public Citizen is representing the groups. Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH) are also part of the push for greater entry level training.
  
This issue is not new. Congress first told FMCSA to finish a rulemaking process on driver training by 1993, but the agency still has not done so.
  
“People are dying needlessly while the agency drags its feet,” Henry Jasny, senior vice president and general counsel with Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said. “New truck drivers need to be properly trained before they get behind the wheel.”
  
Jasny called FMCSA’s foot-dragging a “dereliction” of its duty.
  
FMCSA is proposing negotiations to resolve issues from previous efforts to create entry-level training standards. In 2013, FMCSA suddenly halted an early proposal that was designed to create such standards.
  
While proposing a negotiated rulemaking, FMCSA has contractor, Richard Parker of the University of Connecticut School of Law, as a “convenor” to come up with a seemingly impossible task of getting fleets, driver groups, union representatives, safety advocates and insurance companies on a compromise agreements. Parker did not return phone messages for comment.
  
Approximately 4,000 people die and nearly 100,000 are injured annually in truck crashes, according to federal data. Large truck accidents are estimated to cost the   nation cost to $100 billion annually.
 
And the incidence of heavy truck accidents appears on the rise. Large truck crash fatalities increased by 4 percent in 2012. This follows a 2 percent increase in 2011 and a 9 percent increase in 2010, despite a decline in overall motor vehicle deaths. Further, there was an 18 percent increase in 2012 of those injured in large truck crashes.

“Enough is enough,” Adina Rosenbaum, attorney for Public Citizen, said in a statement. “Twenty years, two lawsuits and two congressional mandates have not been successful at prodding the DOT into issuing the entry-level driver training rule. The court should step in and order the agency to act.”
Today there are approximately 3.9 million truck drivers with commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs). Rookie drivers need only receive 10 hours of classroom lectures and pass a test to get their CDL.
 
There is also a truck driver shortage currently of as many as 60,000 drivers, according to some estimates. Safety advocates say that is causing some trucking fleets to “cut corners” on entry level training, and simply place any warm body behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck.
  
According to a press release from the Teamsters union, Dorothy Wert’s husband, David Wert, Sr., was killed in 2011 in a truck crash caused by an inexperienced truck driver. The accident happened when he hit a broken-down truck parked in the middle of a dark Pennsylvania highway at 3 a.m. with no lights on and no warning signals or flares. After the crash, David, a truck driver with 35 years of experience, managed to drive his truck safely onto the side of the road in spite of suffering fatal injuries.
 
“We have waited far too long for a requirement to ensure that truck drivers know what they are doing and have been tested before we allow them behind the wheel of an 80,000 pound truck,” said Wert, a CRASH volunteer advocate who lives in Montrose, Pa.“Truck drivers should not be allowed to drive without a required understanding of the regulations and a minimum number of training hours behind the wheel,” she added. “I know that my husband would be alive today if the driver that caused Dave’s crash had been better trained, had more experience and had taken the proper precautions.”
 
For their part, the Teamsters union calls stiffer entry level driver standards (including mandatory behind-the-wheel training) “absolutely necessary” to highway safety. The Teamsters represent about 3 percent of the overall number of 3.9 million CDL holders, according to estimates.
  
“Proper training is absolutely necessary for new drivers to operate their rigs safely,” Teamsters President James P. “Jim” Hoffa said in a statement. “The agency is shirking its responsibility by not issuing this long-overdue rule.”
  
Long-overdue is right. Congress told DOT to complete a rulemaking on this issue in 1993. DOT issued a final report in 1995 of expert study of driver training. In 2003, Public Citizen sued FMCSA and won. As part of the settlement FMCSA issued a issued final rule in 2004. But that required just 10 hours of instruction and did not include any behind-the-wheel training or basic driver knowledge and driving skills.
 
In 2005, safety groups and Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association sued FMCSA and won. The final rule was remanded and FMCSA was directed to issue comprehensive final rule. In 2007, FMCSA issued another noticed or proposed rulemaking that required comprehensive training including mandatory driving instruction and a proportion of hours spent behind the wheel. But that was withdrawn on Sept. 19, 2013.
 
“It is a well-known and well-proven fact that new truck drivers are overrepresented in serious truck crashes,” Jasny of the Advocates said. “Research and studies consistently have shown that basic driver knowledge and driver training are essential aspects of comprehensive driver training.”
  
Joan Claybrook, Chair of CRASH and former Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in a statement: “During the past five years, this agency’s dismal track record is to either issue weak safety standards or issue no safety standard at all in defiance of courts and Congress.
 
“We wouldn’t tolerate a pilot getting in the cockpit solo without hours and hours of training and practice in the air,” Claybrook continued. “Yet our federal government lets truck drivers get behind the wheel of a big rig without this practical and necessary experience.”