The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s purge of 3,000 fraudulent truck driver training schools from its Training Provider Registry (TRP) a few weeks ago was welcome news. The TRP was created just a few years ago to register all truck driver training providers who could fulfill the new Entry Level Driver Training rule (ELDT), which was supposed to establish a benchmark or floor for basic truck driver training for new commercial drivers license (CDL) holders.
Unfortunately, as FreightWaves has shown, the ELDT rule was gutted before it became law, and truck driving schools essentially ‘self-certified’ with very little oversight from the FMCSA. There was no required minimum driving time specified in the training; no facilities would ever be inspected by the FMCSA; there was no verification of driving instructor qualifications or credentials.
Truck driver training schools don’t even have to assert that they trained the driver, rode with him, tested him on specific material, completed an obstacle course, ride along, or anything like that—they merely have to verify that the new driver is ‘proficient’, and they don’t have to say why they think that.
The result was an explosion of ‘truck driver training schools’; the TRP filled up with more than 35,000 so-called schools in less than 3 years. Concerned citizens perusing the TRP’s database of truck driving training schools will find these critical vocational training institutions housed in tiny rural churches, random P.O. boxes, and questionable-looking apartments.
Where to start?
There are numerous angles by which the FMCSA could further investigate truck driver training schools for fraud and shut them down. One preliminary filter could just examine the geographical space of the training provider’s listed address to determine if it can even accommodate commercial vehicles. Truck driver training schools that are clearly personal residences could trigger a further inquiry and review.
But that approach—looking at the physical characteristics of the truck driver training provider—might not be the most effective. Many of these schools were likely transient, popping up to take care of a fleet or a few fleets’ temporary needs; they may not have signed off on many drivers’ ELDT requirements and may not be actively ‘training’ drivers. Shutting them down would have little effect.
FreightWaves has obtained documents from one truck driver training provider’s efforts to get better data from the FMCSA on the Training Provider Registry.
On August 7, 2024, 160 Driving Academy, a well-known truck driver training provider that offers training at locations throughout the United States, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FMCSA’s FOIA Officer Jennifer Weatherly.
The premise was simple: 160 Driving Academy wanted the FMCSA to analyze its truck crash fatality data and find the truck driving schools that were listed as fulfilling the ELDT requirement for the CDL holders involved in the crashes.
Here’s the substance of 160 Driving Academy’s request for data:
“In 2022 according to the NHTSA, there were roughly 6,000 heavy truck fatalities in the United States. For each heavy truck driver fatality in the U.S., please provide all information concerning the training provider that electronically submitted the driver’s certification information into the TPR, including the following: (a) the identity of the driver’s training provider; (b) the completion and certification date of the driver’s ELDT; (c) the driver’s training location (city and state); and (d) the license type(s) for which the driver was certified.”
Instead of creating new criteria like the geographical characteristics of the training facility itself, or trying to retroactively require instructor credentials, 160 Driving Academy proposed that the FMCSA go straight to the root of the problem: fatal accidents. Find the truck driving training schools that are associated with the most fatalities, and investigate those schools first to make sure they adhere to strict standards.
One could imagine eventually analyzing the entire Training Provider Registry for ‘quality’ by dividing the number of accidents or fatal accidents associated with a particular training provider by the total number of CDLs endorsed by that provider. That kind of analysis would provide a comprehensive overview of the landscape of truck driving schools, but it isn’t necessary to begin with. First, the FMCSA should take a hard look at training providers linked to a high number of fatalities and remove any deficient providers from the TRP immediately.
FMCSA buried the FOIA request
Biden’s FMCSA took no action on 160 Driving Academy’s FOIA request; instead, they hemmed and hawed. According to Steve Gold, founder and CEO of 160 Driving Academy, first the FMCSA said that “couldn’t produce [the data] as it was too complex,” then the agency delayed fulfilling the request at least two times before blowing it off.
The current administration has the opportunity to do the right thing and attack the fraudulent truck driver school problem in the most effective way possible, by finding the sources of the most dangerous drivers on the highway.
We know the FMCSA has the fatal accident data with CDL numbers attached. We know the FMCSA has Entry Level Driver Training rule data, with registered truck driver schools attached to every CDL issued after February 2022. The FMCSA should do the work of connecting its own data so that it can precisely target the most problematic truck driver training providers.
The next step would be to beef up the ELDT rule to include standards for what truck driver training should look like: specify the material covered in written tests; require a certain number of hours of in-cab instruction; require the demonstration of specific skills before passing.
For now, the FMCSA is busy cleaning up the mess left by the previous administration. We hope they act quickly, in the name of public safety.
The post Commentary: How the FMCSA should investigate truck driving schools appeared first on FreightWaves.
