Do Commercial Truck Drivers Have Special Rules For Drug and Alcohol Use? The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) sets for rules and regulations for commercial truck drivers and trucking companies to protect the public because we must share the road with these extremely large and dangerous vehicles. Accidents involving commercial trucks result in the death or injury of the occupants of the other vehicles in over 70 percent of truck accidents. Due to the weight and size of a commercial truck, the injuries in a truck accident are usually catastrophic. Therefore, the FMCSA sets forth drug and alcohol rules and regulations such as requiring a drug test that covers a minimum of five different substances: • Marijuana • Cocaine • Opiates — opium and codeine derivatives • Amphetamines and …show more content…
Employers are required to test a minimum of 50 percent of its drivers for controlled substances and 10 percent of its drivers for alcohol on an annual basis. • Drivers must agree to drug and/or alcohol testing if the employer has a responsible suspicion that the driver violated trucking regulation related to the use of drugs or alcohol. • Commercial truck drivers who are involved in a truck accident that results in the death of another person or results in a traffic citation being issued must submit to alcohol and drug testing. An alcohol drug test must be given to the truck driver within eight hours of the truck accident. A drug test must be given to the truck driver within 32 hours of the truck accident. • Submit to a return-to-work drug and alcohol test after a violation of trucking regulations. This also includes follow-up tests with a minimum of six tests within the following 12 months. • Face immediate suspension from driving a truck if a blood alcohol test results in a .04 BAC. If the BAC is between .02 and .039, the truck driver is suspended until the next regularly scheduled alcohol
The facts are plain and simple, that alcohol and driving do not mix. About three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol related crash at some time in their lives. Every single injury and death caused by drunk driving is totally preventable. To curb this national travesty, concerned Americans need to examine the problems, the effects, and the solutions to drunk driving. First of all, America has had a problem with drunk driving since Ford perfected the assembly line. Alcoholism is a problem in and of itself, but combined with driving can have a wide range of effects. The consequences of this reckless behavior can include a first time DUI or licenses suspension; a small fender bender, or worst of all a deadly crash. Most drivers that have only one or two drinks feel fine, and assume they are in control, which is irresponsible and dangerous. Alcohol is a depressant that slows down the body's ability to react and impairs judgment. To drive well, you need to be able to have a quick reaction time to avoid accidents. Unfortunately, people continue to drink and drive. However,...
The nursing profession is guided by the principal of nonmaleficence, or “Do no harm”. Nurses are responsible for maintaining and optimizing a patient’s quality of life. When nurses fail to care for themselves, they also put their patients at risk. The patient has a reasonable expectation to receive safe and competent care. The influence of drugs and alcohol greatly deteriorate the judgment and skills of any good nurse. Increased patient workload, long hours, personal stress, and sleep deprivation put many nurses in a position to self-medicate. It is my position that high-risk specialty employees undergo drug testing in order to be held accountable and help keep their patients and themselves safe from harm.
Drunk Driving is defined as: Operating a motor vehicle while one 's blood alcohol content is above the legal limit set by statute, which supposedly is the level at which a person cannot drive safely. State statutes define the legal limit to be between .08 and .10 depending on what state you’re in. Every 51 minutes in America, someone is killed in a drunk driving crash(MADD). That equates to 27 people every day. Which comes to a total of at least 9,855 deaths in a year. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 32% of fatal car crashes involve an intoxicated driver or pedestrian (MADD). As of right now, in society the total number of drunk driving accidents is slowly but surely increasing and if nothing is done about it, it’ll result in a tragic amount of deaths and injuries. Drunk drivers are extremely dangerous not just to oneself, but to society as well. That is why one serious solution to this societal epidemic is to create a portion of the driving test where drivers will be required to be at least ten beers deep and while drunk they must drive through a set of
...t over an extended period of time. “…Offenders also complete pre and post knowledge tests, drinking profiles, and an exit interview with the course instructor” (A Comparison). Drunk drivers are required to learn something from the experience by making them prove it at the end of the course. Along with harsh laws against drunk driving these methods with eventually put an end to drunk driving.
Today, approximately 62% of all employers in the US have a mandatory drug testing program. Drug testing in the workforce has been a very controversial topic ever since. Drug testing should not be in the workplace since it does not measure on the job impairment, does not prevent accidents and is an invasion of privacy. There is no clear evidence that drug testing at work has a significant deterrent effect. Drug testing is not a measure of current intoxication and will reveal information about drug use that can have no impact on safety, productivity or performance.
...ught, he or she will not be severely punished. The unsupported threat of increased penalties is not sufficient to achieve long-term changes in habitual drinking and driving behavior. Experts believe that the prospect of jail time or revoking of driver’s license may be effective in getting the attention of the habitual drunk driver who has never been caught. “But unless treatment is available to capitalize on this attention, powerful habits will re-emerge as the memory of punishment fades” (Fields).
Driving under influence or with high blood alcohol content (BAC) increases the risk of car accidents, vehicular deaths, and more so highway injuries across all age-groups. In fact, an intoxicated driver with relatively higher BAC increases his/her risk of death by up to 380 times in single-vehicle crash (DeMichele, Lowe & Payne, 2014). Drunk driving is often considered as the largest social problem in the modern day society since 40 to 45% of all fatal traffic accidents usually involve drunk drivers. While 16 is the average blood alcohol content among some seriously injured drinking drivers, the culture of driving under influence can only be stopped through the development of a plausible plan to prevent it (Sloan, Eldred & Xu, 2014).
These schools and training institutes offer complete assistance for their students to learn every required skill to become a safe and reliable driver. In addition, many of these schools also offer proper assistance to their students in finding a good job as a trucker. Professionally, a truck driving job is considered as a high salaried job and hence, many people look forward to get in the trucking industry as a driver. These CDL training schools train these people to easily handle the pressures and responsibilities of a truck driver. Furthermore, these trucker training schools are also important because they make every truck driver aspirant aware of all necessary legal traffic regulations of their state and other states. Another advantage of these training schools is that they ensure that no unskilled and unprofessional person may enter in the profession of truck driving. This helps in reducing the fatalities in road accidents involving heavy motor vehicles.
Therefore, the NTSB put out a recommendation last May that the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) level for drivers should be lowered from the current level of.08% to.05%. But for several reasons, we shouldn’t lower the criterion on blood alcohol content. Lowering the criterion on blood alcohol content would make a lot of responsible social drinkers become criminals. A 170 pound man could get to.05 by drinking three beers in an hour, and a 137 pound woman by drinking just two, which means that the man could be legally impaired if he had three drinks, but the woman could earn a set of handcuffs with only two drinks. According to “Lower the BAC level for DWI to.05%,” Jazz Shaw makes a similar point.
There are some pros to having drug tests though. A good thing about drug testing periodically would be that it could possibly frighten employees to do and use drugs, then they would stay clean and hopefully diminish the number of accidents and/or fatalities at the work place. It is a proven fact that a typical recreational drug user in today’s work force is 2.2 times more likely to request time off or an early dismissal. They are 2.5 times more likely to have eight or more days of absences, three more times likely to be late for work and a third less productive on his or her job (USA TODAY MAGAZINE, JAN. 1995 PP-81-82). Also that if a person is caught with drugs then the employer could help this person, send him to a rehabilitation and hopefully get this person off of drugs before it becomes to late.
Driving under the influence is one of the most common and dangerous situations in which anyone can be or be placed. Drinking and driving is a serious offence that can cause someone to be physically harm or even killed. Not only are you putting yourself at risk but you are also risking the lives of passengers in the car as well as any other car and occupants sharing the road with you. Many people believe that increasing fines for drunk driving offenders will play a compelling role in cutting down the occurrences of driving under the influence. However, while harsher DUI laws will look effective on paper, they will not make a significant step in the fight against drunk driving. Although there is a law enforced for drinking and driving in the
The fifty states setted a blood alcohol limit of 0.08 percent, many states have zero-tolerance laws that apply to new drivers and drivers you have been driving for years. Some people will go to court about this law because the limit is arbitrary and it does not take in ability to function with a BAC of 0.08 or more in his or hers system. Many heavy drinkers or what we call them today alcoholics, if they drink all the time and if you have your license be the responsible one and ask them for a ride home. Many drinkers reactions are really slow and their ability to control a vehicle is compromised. “Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is an organization to stop the reckless driving while intoxicated,” (Gale). Many teens and adults while coming home from drinking they have hard time with their driving skills such as steering, braking, and changing
It is also very hard to decide if the test is an invasion of employee privacy. “The ethical status of workplace drug testing can be expressed as a question of competing interests, between the employer’s right to use testing to reduce drug related harms and maximize profits, over against the employee’s right to privacy, particularly with regard to drug use which occurs outside the workplace.” (Cranford 2). The rights of the employee have to be considered. The Supreme Court case, Griswold vs. Connecticut, outlines the idea that every person is entitled to a privacy zone.
With laws today against discrimination, employees have so many options they can do to challenge it. The cost of drug testing is an expense cost at the hands of the employer, but If they feel the need to spend money to test employees they plan to run a high productivity workplace. It comes out of pocket for a small private employer and if they are willing to spend the money on it, it their
When employees get hired, they get a drug test due to the fact that the drug testing can prove if the person they are hiring is a good person for their business. For an example “Approximately eighty-one percent of companies in the United States administer drug testing to their employees.” Drug testing also proves that people who passes it are clean and responsible people who the company can trust on doing their job well done and showing overall percentage of the US using drug testing (Chodorow). People who cheat on a drug test and gets a job will later ruin their job of getting into accidents during working and or start a fight with the boss or coworkers unknowingly just because they were high on drugs. That is why companies strive to do drug tests every time they hire an employee now due to the fact that they don’t want to be reliable for an employee who isn’t responsible and trustworthy of their time at their company. Which it will affect the company financially once employees gets hurt on their job. An employee who is not a drug abuser can really benefit a company by not causing trouble for themselves getting hurt in the company and also the business not being reliable for anything that is caused by the employee; who was not responsible. Another example is that reports confirm that 80% of those injured in “serious drug related accidents are innocent coworkers.” And after it began requiring accidents drug