TAMPA, FL-- If you have ever driven on the interstate, then you know what it’s like to be side by side with an 18-wheeler.
The slightest movement could be disastrous.
That's exactly why if you ask anyone at Tampa's Roadmaster truck driving school what's their top priority, they'll tell you: "safety."Chief safety officer Tommy Thomas says before a driver gets their license they have to pass a written test, a driving test, and they also have to pass a physical exam.
"You don't want a driver out there that has a heart condition, severe diabetes, a health condition that could impair his ability to drive the truck," Thomas says.
The doctor's ok will earn drivers a medical certificate, valid for two years, stating they're healthy enough to get behind the wheel of an 80,000 pound vehicle.
But, we've discovered safety doesn't always come first on the open road. In fact, truckers with serious medical conditions may be behind the wheel.
Jessica Rose of Ohio was killed instantly when this truck slammed into her car.
“If someone needs 27 prescriptions, they probably shouldn’t be driving a commercial vehicle they probably shouldn’t be driving a car on the highway much less a tractor trailer," says Jessica’s father Randy Rose.
The prescriptions ranged from pain killers to drugs for seizures and panic disorders. And though none was found in his system, we did find out the trucker was not medically approved to drive.
The problem is a major flaw in the way Florida and states across the country monitor and track truckers.
For years there has been no way to validate their medical card. The information on that piece of paper can't be found in any database, nor does the state have a copy of it on file anywhere.
"His medical card could expire and if he doesn't re-up his card, there's no way of knowing that," Thomas says.
That is, unless the trucker is pulled over.
We examined the state's medical certificate violations for the past three years and uncovered 23,000 citations were handed out from 2006-2008. The violations range from truckers not having their card with them, to expired cards, to fraudulent cards. Law enforcement issued hundreds of citations to drivers in the Tampa Bay area in 2008 alone.
We also talked to the Florida Department of Transportation Motor Carrier Compliance Office. Consumer Investigator Kerry Kavanaugh asked "Could you potentially have someone out there with multiple citations still on the road." “I would say that's a possibility," says Lt. Ezra Folsom.
We caught up with Folsom as he was tracking the big rigs that pass through his an FDOT weigh station on I-4. He admits that the system has potential for widespread abuse and that because of the lack of oversight drivers; don't have much incentive to keep the card up-to-date.
"They're generally non-moving violation no points on the license so there's not much bite to the citation," Folsom says. Folsom and the DOT say they only enforce the law.
But, many including Randy Rose, would like to see some laws change.
"Just some oversight just some teeth to the law could save hundreds if not thousands of lives every year," says Rose.
The state is trying to figure out how to implement a new federal policy recently passed, that would link the medical card to the commercial truck driver’s license, but that probably won't happen until 2010-2012. Some lawmakers think efforts should go even further and want a law that a trucker's physical exams only be done by doctors certified by the federal government.
