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Monday, December 18, 2000
By Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Federal regulations meant to keep unhealthy truck and bus drivers from climbing into the cabs of their 80,000-pound vehicles are about to get a major tune-up.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has learned that a draft report under internal review at the National Transportation Safety Board will recommend that the U.S. Department of Transportation adopt wide-ranging changes in regulations that tighten controls on who does the drivers' physical exams and expand the information a driver must provide to get a medical certificate.
While specifics aren't final, a top federal official made it clear the recommendations will be substantial.
"Right now, getting a commercial driver's medical certificate is not much more difficult than getting a medical physical for Boy Scout summer camp," said Joseph Osterman, director of NTSB's office of highway safety.
The NTSB, under congressional mandate to investigate transportation accidents, zeroed in on the medical certification issue after a May 1999 single-vehicle bus accident in New Orleans that killed 22 people. The driver, it was later learned, had a heart condition that should have disqualified him from operating a commercial vehicle. He also had been hospitalized hours before the accident for dizziness, nausea and low blood pressure after dialysis treatment.
More broadly, a Post-Gazette series published in January showed system-wide problems in the medical certification program, problems that allow seriously ill commercial drivers to stay on the road.
To drive legally, commercial drivers must pass a Department of Transportation physical exam at least every two years. They can go to an array of examiners, including physicians, nurses, physician assistants or chiropractors, none of whom are required to demonstrate any special training or knowledge of the DOT requirements.
Rather than risk losing their jobs, drivers with serious medical conditions sometimes seek out examiners who are unfamiliar with DOT regulations, the PG series revealed. Those examiners then may pass drivers who have vision in only one eye, or who suffer from a dangerous sleep disorder, or who have a life-threatening heart condition.
Nor are the exams necessarily thorough. In one case, a Murrysville truck driver underwent physicals every other year for 20 years before an examiner noticed he had an artificial lower left leg, a condition for which commercial drivers must get a special waiver. In other cases, drivers did not divulge chronic medical conditions or medications they were taking to treat them.
The series also showed that when an examiner does fail a driver, that information is not reported to any licensing agency, so drivers can go from examiner to examiner until they find someone to pass them.
"That's an enormous loophole in the system," Osterman said. "You can move to a new town and it's almost as if you get a clean slate."
Every year, more than 5,000 people are killed in road accidents involving big rigs. Most of the time, studies have shown, the driver of the passenger vehicle is at fault. And in nearly every case, the deaths occur in the passenger vehicle.
"The mass always wins when you get in a tangle like that," Osterman said.
That's why federal officials are looking closely at the operators of the oversize vehicles and anything that might affect their alertness or their ability to control their rigs. Currently, commercial drivers hold a state-issued license and a separate DOT medical certificate. Osterman indicated that one NTSB recommendation would be to combine them with information on the driver's employment history and driving record.
"They have to be tied together. Otherwise it would be bureaucracy run amok."
No one knows exactly how often a truck driver's medical condition plays a major role in big rig accidents, Osterman acknowledged, although one study of 182 accidents found that 10 percent of fatally injured truck drivers had a medical condition that was either a major factor or the cause of the accident.
"We do know from our investigations that we see this issue time and time again," said Osterman.
Just last week, 41-year-old Donald Lynn Nobles of Lumberton, N.C., was found dead in the cab of his truck after suffering an apparent heart attack while driving on the Georgia interstate near Smyrna. When police arrived, the cab of the truck was dangling off a ramp. Other drivers reported seeing him swerving across lanes before the crash.
"It hit the inside of the cement railing," said Beverley Applestone, who was driving behind the truck. "...He never put on brakes or anything. He just went with a lot of speed."
Police said initial reports show the crash did not kill the driver.
Osterman said he expected the NTSB recommendations, after approval by the board, to be forwarded to the DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and other agencies in the next four months.
"I think they'll respond fairly quickly to this issue."
If they don't, he added, "you're going to have more accidents like New Orleans, where a driver has a horrendous medical history but is still able to get behind the wheel of a bus or truck."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.