Report says there's too many medically unfit truck drivers, lawmakers ponder solution

It's so easy to fabricate the medical certificates required to operate commercial trucks in the United States that there's almost no incentive for truckers to obtain a legitimate document, a congressional study reports. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's study — expected to be released at a hearing Thursday — found there are so few controls over how drivers obtain medical certificates that it's "relatively easy" to circumvent the physical examination requirement. Nor is there any database that lets state inspectors verify the legitimacy of a medical certificate, according to the report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The Transportation Committee's study was based on a sample of 614 medical certificates obtained from truck drivers at roadside inspections in California, Illinois and Ohio. The... [read full story]