The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is continually examining ways to improve the safety of our nation’s highways.
It works to prevent trucking accidents with specialized trucking safety regulations, with company safety ratings, with vehicle inspections and with driver fitness requirements.
Most commercial truck drivers are required to meet certain medical fitness requirements and must be examined by a doctor at least every two years. Drivers who fail the medical exam are not supposed to get the required medical certificate needed to be a commercial truck driver. But truck drivers with serious medical problems —drug or alcohol dependency, diabetes, sleep apnea, even a history of heart attack — are still on the road. How has this happened and what can be done about it?
Currently, the FMCSA has no specific requirements for doctors who can do trucker fitness exams. A family practitioner who is unaware of the particular strains on truck drivers may do an inadequate assessment — or may just rubber stamp the medical qualification paperwork without conducting a thorough exam.
If that doctor puts an unsafe driver out on the road and the driver experiences a medical emergency that leads to a trucking accident, can that doctor be held accountable? The answer may, in part, be yes.
Ultimately, it’s the trucking company that is accountable for its drivers, but when a doctor’s negligence fails to alert the company to a medical problem, that doctor could find him or herself facing a medical malpractice lawsuit.
The FMCSA has recognized the problem of inadequate medical examiners. The agency has been charged with establishing a national registry of qualified medical examiners who have received training and passed a certification test. Trucking companies and drivers could then use authorized medical examiners to conduct the required CMV driver physical exam.
The new certification procedure would ensure that a medical examiner is able to diagnose 13 medical conditions that have been determined by the FMCSA to impair safe driving of commercial trucks, such as:
• Limitation of a limb;
• Diabetes needing insulin control (diabetes can cause vision problems and blackouts);
• Epilepsy or any other condition that could lead to a loss of consciousness; and
• Vision that is any less than 20/40 with or without corrective lenses.
It is hoped that by training medical examiners to recognize all of these trouble spots, the number of unsafe drivers on the road will dramatically decrease.
