This report summarizes the results of the 2011 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Drug and Alcohol Testing Survey. This annual survey measures the percentage of drivers with commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) who test positive for controlled substances (referred to as drugs in this report) and/or alcohol, as a result of random and non-random (pre-employment, post-accident, reasonable suspicion, return to duty, and follow-up) testing. Motor carriers that employ CDL drivers are required to have drug and alcohol testing programs, pursuant to Part 382 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Currently, FMCSA requires these carriers to randomly test 10 percent of their CDL drivers for alcohol and 50 percent of their CDL drivers for drugs each year. In addition, FMCSA requires carriers to perform drug and alcohol testing (non-random) on CDL drivers whenever (1) the driver is being considered for employment (only for drugs and only when the driver has not recently been in a drug and alcohol testing program); (2) the driver has been involved in an accident (only when the accident involves a fatality, or when the driver receives a citation in a tow-away or injury-related accident); (3) the driver is suspected by an employer of using drugs or alcohol while at work; (4) the driver, who tested positive, has completed the education/treatment process, before returning to duty and for follow-up testing. In the case of alcohol, an on-duty CDL driver is in violation of FMCSA regulations when his or her blood alcohol content (BAC) is equal to 0.02 grams per 210 liters of breath, or higher. If the driver tests at a concentration of 0.04 or higher, he or she also must undergo referral, evaluation, and treatment, pursuant to Part 382, subpart E. The alcohol violation rate for the industry (determined annually by FMCSA and used to evaluate required motor carrier testing rates) is determined based on a 0.04 cutoff level. For drugs (marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and phencyclidine, or PCP), the cutoff levels for identifying use are based on guidelines set by the Department of Health and Human Services. The positive usage rates presented herein represent weighted statistical estimates. These estimates are generalizable to the entire population of CDL drivers in the national fleet and have been derived by using standard statistical techniques applicable to stratified samples. It is important to keep in mind that the rates obtained from these procedures do not represent true values but unbiased estimates of the true rates with associated sampling errors. Estimates of positive usage rates from both random and non-random testing are discussed separately. All survey estimates from the 2011 survey are presented in Tables 1 and 2, which also include estimates from the 2009 and 2010 surveys. Unless specified otherwise, the term “positive usage rate” refers to use of any of the five drugs previously referenced. Usage rates for specific drugs were also calculated using the 2011 data. It should be noted, however, that the precision levels of these usage rates for individual drugs are considerably lower than the precision levels generally obtained for overall drug use. Also, in the case of random testing, these drug-specific rates may not necessarily add up to the overall positive usage rate. This stems from the fact that (1) a driver may test positive for more than one drug, but will only be counted once when calculating the overall positive rate; (2) the overall positive rate also includes refusals to test, which are treated as positives for this estimate but are not included in the rate for specific drugs; and (3) a carrier, when reporting its data to FMCSA, may include information on overall drug use, but may fail to give details for specific drugs. For the 2011 survey, survey forms were sent out to 2,976 randomly selected motor carriers. The majority of these forms (2,468) were completed and returned to FMCSA, resulting in usable data from 1,773 carriers (comprising 491,999 CDL drivers) for random controlled substance testing, as well as usable data from 2,098 carriers (comprising 137,358 CDL drivers) for random alcohol testing. Respondents providing non-usable data represent entities that are out-of-business, exempt, have no testing program in place, or belong to consortia that did not test any drivers for the carrier during 2011. (Author/publisher)
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