Coding of Violation / Impaired Driver

In situations where fleets are made aware of a driver who may be impaired, the drivers are often hundreds if not thousands of miles away from a company official who could conduct a reasonable suspicion observation of them. In situations like this, fleets will often reach out to enforcement to check on the driver in an effort to ensure the driver is safe to operate the vehicle. Frequently the fleet is guiding the officer right to the driver and making attempts to get them stopped if they are driving, in an effort to ensure public safety. The issue is when the driver is found to be impaired. In some states and cases the violation is noted against the driver only and not reflected on the fleets SMS scores. In other cases the violation goes on the fleets SMS scores as well and now the fleets Drug and Alcohol SMS is impacted. This score is very volatile and just one violation can send a fleet into an alert status or even impact their ability to retain or obtain required insurance coverage. This could also cause fleets to not act on reports, try and handle remotely or not involve enforcement in these situations for fear of how their SMS scores could be impacted. None of these are good for public safety or for the industry.

There needs to be a way for enforcement to document the violation against the driver but not the fleet in situations where the fleet has reached out for help. There is plenty of supporting documentation that the call came in from the fleet and often the officer speaks directly to a representative from the fleet during the process. If the officer had a way to note this, the violation will still follow the driver and ensure a bad actor is removed from the road, but not negatively impact the fleet for doing the right thing for public safety.

We have discussed this topic in the Driver Vehicle Committee meeting and it is asked the Information Systems Committee work on a way in the new system to support this. There are currently violations that the system allows to not go against the fleet when found. Enforcement was in support of this so long as the system allowed the violation to still follow the driver and would be able to document the fleet identified the driver and reached out for support from enforcement. During our meeting in April their was discussion of the new system coming out and that this would be a great time to find a solution to this. We ask for your support in continuing to allow fleets and enforcement to partner in public safety but hold those bad actors accountable for their individual actions.