Each year there is an average of 3.2 million truckers on the road. According to the Department of Transportation 500,000 trucks will get into accidents, causing 98% of the truck drivers involved to be killed. Studies also show that trucks are involved in 2.4% of all traffic accidents while one person is injured or killed in a truck accident every 16 minutes.

Due to highway safety being a top concern for Congress, drug testing commercial drivers is a mandatory law. The commercialized trucking industry follows these laws, but there is a loophole that drivers have discovered. Earlier this month U.S. Representative Rick Crawford introduced the Safe Roads Act of 2011 to close the current loophole.

Presently under federal law, every commercial truck driver must pass a drug and alcohol test. The loophole that has been discovered is that a driver can apply with one company and fail the pre-employment drug test.  Of course they would be turned away, but the loophole is that they can later apply with another company and pass the drug test. The second company would have no idea that the person they hired had previously failed a drug test.

The Safe Roads Act of 2011 was introduced in hopes to close this loophole. The goal is to prevent failed drug test drivers from going to other companies out of state. The new Safe Road Act would create an organized database of alcohol and drug free truck drivers.

In Arkansas there is a similar bill that is already active.  Since the bill went into effect in 2007, they have already found more than 300 violators.  Rick Crawford feels that Arkansas was a good case study for this type of program. Since Arkansas has heavier commercial carrier traffic than the rest of most states Crawford stated that it’s a “perfect model on a natural scale”.

If the Safe Roads Act passes, which Crawford is confident it will, the new law should be in place in the beginning of 2012.