State says 563 truckers in Miami-Dade & Collier have to retake license test

Sun-Sentinel Link

Associated Press, Posted October 22 2001, 10:13 AM EDT

MIAMI -- State officials are ordering 563 truckers to take their commercial license test again over concerns they may have improperly got their licenses in Miami-Dade and Collier counties.

Notification letters of the retesting are being sent out, according to Skip Hood, a state highway-safety analyst who deals with commercial license issues.

Any notified truckers who fail to show up and get retested, he said, will have their commercial licenses canceled.

"Some of the drivers who are receiving retesting notifications and being called in for retesting are pretty angry and upset, and understandably so,'' said Hood, who pointed out that the state has not accused any of the drivers of breaking the law.

``We simply have reason to think that these drivers may not have been properly tested,'' he said. ``Whether it is their fault or not, we are requiring them to be retested.''

All truckers being tested again must go to one of Florida's six state-operated testing centers, including the one in Miami-Dade County. They are not permitted to take the test over at any of the 450 privately operated testers statewide, where 90 percent of Florida's commercial driver's license exams are given.

State records indicate that 516 of those 563 truck drivers whose commercial licenses are being recalled got their licenses from a private, Naples area truck-driving skills tester.

The 47 others are linked to an ongoing probe involving a Miami-Dade driver's license office. In that case, seven driver's license examiners have been on paid administrative leave since June pending a final outcome.

The license recall had backing from the trucking industry. too.

The Florida Trucking Association, which represents 12,000 truckers working for more than 1,000 companies, agees with getting unqualified drivers off the road.

``We don't want anybody on the roadway who is not a totally qualified driver and totally aware of their commitment to safety,'' said the group's president, Charles Brantley. ``We do not want a compromise.''

Nearly 565,000 drivers hold commercial driver's licenses in Florida, and the state has an estimated 140,000 large trucks on its roads every day.

The U.S. Motor Carrier Safety Administration has criticized the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, saying the state should improve oversight of its commercial driver's license system covering rigs weighing more than 80,000 pounds.

``The state's interest in customer service ... appears to promote customer satisfaction with minimal emphasis on safety program management,'' according to a report last fall by the Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

``While implementation of (private) testing programs reduces a state's testing burden,'' the report said, ``it does not minimize the state's obligation to ensure that driver testing standards and protocols are maintained at their highest levels.''

Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

[Gotta wonder if they aren't checking out the drivers for some other reason, like because the terrorists were interested in getting hazmat licenses.]

-- Anonymous, October 22, 2001

Answers

This will take a while, won't it? We certainly have a lot of better- late-than-never responses going on. Hope there's time.

-- Anonymous, October 22, 2001