Why the Certification of DOT Examiners

[Guest guest]

I am glad asked some questions about what would seem to be

just more regulation of our profession.

Secretary Mineta has always been a strong crusader for increasing

safety on the our national highways. Over the last 10 years, there

has been a large increase in the number of trucks on the road, the

number of miles driven, and an increase in the age of those driving

the trucks. The result has been an overall increase in the number

of fatalities on the road.

Unfortunately, those who perform most of the CDL physicals are

certifying drivers who should have been removed from service. The

great majority of CDL physicals are not performed by the

Chiropractic profession, however, those drivers are going out and

getting into accidents which would have been prevented.

There is no problem with the compentence of the Doc in performing

these exams. We all know how to do them, and do them in a

compentent manner. The problem is the regulations. And, to be

honest, I would guess that most DCs are not as familiar with the

regulations as they would think. And there are consequences.

Although, in general I think DCs are probably a little more informed

than our counterparts.

Consider what happened recently in California. A driver got his CDL

exam from a Chiropractor. One year later, he went nuts and drove

his rig into the California state capitol building. The only thing

that he killed was the Chiropractic profession but he did do 16

million dollars of damage to the building. The State Legislature

along with the Governator passed a law that now keeps DCs from doing

most of the physical exams in California. Now, there were

interested parties who said that the DC should known not to certify

someone with a mental history, or that the driver's mental state was

not properly evaluated.

The Administrator for the Federal Motor r Safety

Administration says that she signs more letters regarding drivers

who should not have been certified than any other type of letter.

So the certification program is designed to insure that the driver

of that big rig really is safe (medically speaking) to be on the

road.

There is a lot more to the regulations than you would think. Check

out the guidlines for the cardiovascular disease...it's 66 pages

long.

However, this is a huge opportunity that we should fully support.

Mike Megehee, DC