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Chairman deplores lack of controls after hearing into crash that killed 22
Friday, January 21, 2000
By Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
NEW ORLEANS - America does not have a program to ensure that commercial truck and bus drivers are medically fit to be on the highway.
Read the PG's two-part series exploring why hundreds of America's commercial truck and bus drivers remain on the road despite serious physical or mental problems, and how lapses in regulations are putting lives at risk.
That was the conclusion of James Hall, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, at a public hearing yesterday on a bus crash near here last Mother's Day in which 22 passengers died. The consensus yesterday was that the driver, Frank Bedell, had medical conditions that should have prevented him from driving that day.
"People would not go on an airplane and want to arrive with somebody who's medically unfit," said Hall, "and yet we're sharing our highways with truck drivers who are medically unfit."
The NTSB will make recommendations in coming weeks for ways to improve the safety of commercial drivers. Hall believes there is plenty to consider.
"The medical certification process now is virtually nonexistent," he said.
The U.S. Department of Transportation requires commercial truck and bus drivers to get physicals every two years to show they can handle the 80,000-pound rigs they navigate on U.S. highways.
In a two-part series this week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette showed how porous that system is.
Drivers with life-threatening illnesses can circumvent the medical certification process by shopping around for an examiner who will certify them. Because the exams can be done by almost any licensed health examiner, including some nurses, physician's assistants and chiropractors, many examiners are unfamiliar with what medical conditions should disqualify drivers. And because failed exams are typically only reported to the employer, there is nothing to prevent the driver from seeking out a more lenient examiner for a different job.
The hearing was convened here because of the bus accident and was part of the NTSB's yearlong examination of heavy vehicle safety and the medical certification of commercial drivers.
Hall said NTSB invited experts from the Federal Aviation Administration to the New Orleans hearing to contrast its rigorous and comprehensive medical certification program for pilots with that for commercial drivers.
Commercial pilots must see designated air examiners for their physicals, which are done under tight controls. Where FAA has physician medical directors in each of its nine regions to oversee the process, the program for 9 million commercial drivers has one full-time nurse, based in Washington, D.C., to oversee the program and field inquiries.
"That's absurd on its face," Hall said.
Hall said the commercial vehicle safety should have the same safety-first culture that exists in aviation. More than 5,000 people die each year in collisions between trucks and passenger vehicles. "We don't have to have all these fatalities."
Even if the driver of a passenger vehicle is at fault, Hall said, the sheer size of the rig argues for close scrutiny of underlying safety issues. When an 80,000-pound truck hits a 5,000-pound passenger car, "the people in the smaller vehicle are going to be fatally or seriously injured."
One witness, Todd Spencer of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, argued that accident numbers attributed specifically to a driver's medical condition don't point to a major problem. "The remedy is not more rules."
But medical experts see a clear need to shore up the program.
Dr. Natalie Hartenbaum, a Philadelphia physician considered one of the country's leading experts on commercial driver physicals, spoke in favor of a national registration of examiners.
Hartenbaum said she has had drivers express surprise when she asked them to disrobe for a physical. "They said they had never been asked to undress before." The PG series recounted how one truck driver had gone through 20 years of physicals before an examiner noticed he had an artificial leg.
At the very least, Hartenbaum said, a system of designated physicians could be used to update the examiners on regulation changes.
Dr. Warren Silberman of the FAA recommended "a massive teaching program" for designated examiners "where you bring them up to speed on the regulations and then you follow them in some way."
Hall, when asked afterward what he saw as the program's major deficiency, replied, "You've got to have a program before you can have deficiencies in that program."
PG Online Special Report: Rigged for Disaster