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EmailAlthough the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched the first phases of its Pre-Employment Screening Program (“PSP”) back in May of 2010, many in the industry are just now starting to comprehend its significance and put its tools to use. PSP is a comprehensive data collection and rating system designed to improve the overall quality of commercial drivers. It aims to reach this goal by providing carriers with the information necessary to make better decisions when hiring commercial drivers.
PSP is not simply an amped-up version of a Motor Vehicle Report (MVR) or DAC report with which drivers and carriers are all-too familiar. A PSP report provides carriers with a far more expansive snapshot of a driver’s overall safety performance; it allows a carrier to purchase a report that contains five years of crash information and three years of DOT roadside inspection data collected by the FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS). By adding the driver’s accident and roadside
inspection information to the DMV’s tracking of traffic violations, the FMCSA developed a system to make safety performance information electronically available for pre-employment screening purposes.
As this new program becomes more widely used, legal questions are sure to follow. Will data from the driver’s PSP report be admissible at a trial? Will it become the standard of the industry for employers to use this program or face liability for negligent hiring? How consequential must a driver’s past record be before it would become unreasonable for a carrier to hire that driver? All of these questions will have to be considered as the data from this program become more available.
For more details about the protection of the commercial driver’s privacy, as well information on how to obtain a PSP report, visit the FMCSA’s PSP website.
