After a daylong meeting of sometimes contentious debate, members of FMCSA’s Federal Motor Carrier Advisory Committee and Medical Review Board voted 16-4 to forward their recommendations to the agency, reports Transport Topics.
Much of the debate at the meeting centered on whether the two advisory panels should stick to an MRB recommendation that drivers with BMIs of 33 to 39 also be given mandatory sleep tests if they have three of 11 factors that deem a driver to be at great risk for sleep apnea. In a 15-7 vote, the committees voted down a proposal to increase the number of required risk factors to four of 11 before being referred to sleep studies.
The Transport Topics story got a small detail wrong.
“require medical examiners to immediately disqualfy and refer commercial motor vehicle drivers to sleep experts and take costly diagnostic sleep tests if they have a body mass index of 40”
The reccomendations are NOT to immediately dq for BMI>40 but to conditionally certify pending a sleep study with no other risk factors required.