National Rules for Truck, Bus Drivers Sought

The Reagan Administration, citing “incredible differences” in state laws, told Congress Tuesday that it will propose uniform national licensing standards for commercial truck and bus drivers.

Jenna Dorn, the Transportation Department’s deputy associate secretary, also told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that the Administration will seek to forbid interstate truck and bus drivers from holding licenses in more than one state--a tactic sometimes used to hide poor driving records.

She said the department prefers to implement new rules through administrative action rather than through legislation, as proposed by Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), Senate Commerce Committee chairman.

Industry Endorses Legislation

But an industry official said that legislation is needed because the federal rule-making process is slow and cumbersome. “At the rate the department is going, it will take approximately 20 years” to correct “a crisis situation,” said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the American Trucking Assn., in endorsing Danforth’s legislation.

Decrying “a crazy quilt pattern that varies from state to state,” Donohue testified that the current licensing program is flawed because “it fails to qualify drivers on the vehicles they will drive and then it fails to get bad drivers off the road.”

In 19 states, he said, a person “whose driving skills have been tested only in a car can legally drive a large truck.” And, he said, because 20 states have not joined the National Driver License Compact to exchange traffic violation information, truck drivers can “shuffle licenses like a deck of cards, obtaining two, three or a dozen simultaneously valid licenses which are used to hide violations.”

“The problem has reached epidemic proportions,” the industry official said, citing a study by state regulators which found that nearly one-third of America’s truck drivers have licenses in more than one state.

Will Issue Proposed Rules

In calling for uniform standards for commercial driver’s licenses, the Transportation Department’s Dorn said: “We have already decided that a stronger federal role is appropriate” and will issue the proposed rules this month under existing law. She added: “The simple truth is that there are incredible differences among the states.”

But reforms will take time, she said.