Important Advisory: FMCSA CDL Training Audits
By Peter Mannella
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has launched a nationwide effort to ensure that individuals obtaining Commercial Drivers Licenses are properly trained in accordance with federal law and regulations.
In recent months, FMCSA has identified numerous training entities and programs that are not meeting the regulatory requirements of the Entry Level Driver Training program created to train CDL holders, including school bus drivers. This has resulted in many of those programs being shut down and prohibited from conducting training.
Among the immediate issues is FMCSA’s publicly stated concern that many training providers have trained and granted licenses to undocumented immigrants and other ineligible persons to drive commercial vehicles, including school buses.
FMCSA’s review has found cases of training providers:
• Falsifying or manipulating training data
• Neglecting to meet required curriculum standards, facility conditions, or instructor qualifications
• Failing to maintain accurate, complete documentation or refusing to provide records during federal audits or investigations
According to FMCSA Administrator, Derek Barrs: “If you are unwilling to follow the rules, you have no place training America’s commercial drivers. We will not tolerate negligence.”
This is a serious situation requiring our attention and action.
It is vital to child safety and to ensuring the trust placed in us by parents that we review our training programs and contracts to ensure that all necessary steps and requirements are being met before we hire drivers for our operations.
More specifically, training providers need to ensure that all training is delivered in accordance with the basic requirements of the ELDT program. Additionally, training providers need to ensure proper documentation of training that meets the basic requirements of the ELDT. This includes maintaining accurate, complete, and timely records that verify each trainee has received and successfully completed the mandated instruction and assessments. There really are no shortcuts. An important resource to assist in this process is the FMCSA Safety Audit Guidebook.
Every one of us owes it to our taxpayers, our school leaders and, most of all, our students, to take steps to review this aspect of our operations closely and to be ready in the event of an audit by FMCSA. No one needs to be surprised by such an audit; and no one needs to fail such an audit.
NAPT will continue to monitor this issue and related activities and share what we learn.
Curtailing Self-Certification?
Derek Barrs, Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced recently that the agency would be moving to end the practice of ‘self-certification’ of providers, including training providers and medical examiners. His intent is to strengthen the integrity of the commercial motor vehicle industry, which includes school bus vehicles. Barrs noted that the system now relies on attestations by providers that they meet all the standards and requirements of the law. He believes that there needs to be more accountability and rigor in the system and that providers need to be vetted to verify compliance.
In a speech to an industry group recently, Barrs noted that “You wanna be an Entry Level Driver Training provider? You just sign up,” Barrs said. “That’s pretty much it. There’s no oversight for that per se.” He was clear in noting that, for the rest of his tenure, the agency would move away from such practices in the interests of safety.
NAPT seeks to ensure that any and all systems related to school bus safety are sound and rigorously enforced by both our federal and state governmental agencies.
There have been no regulatory actions related to this policy framework, but we will keep a close eye on this issue for our NAPT members.