Border Protection Key To Opening
OLIVER B. PATTON
WASHINGTON EDITOR
The Department of Transportation still is on track to open the southern border to long-distance Mexican trucks by mid-year, says truck safety chief Joseph Clapp.
Some of the border protection pieces are in place -- weigh-in-motion scales have been installed at several border crossings, for example -- but the highest hurdle remains to be crossed, Clapp told Congress.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is in the process of hiring and training 214 new people to fill out its border enforcement staff. Right now, the agency has a border staff of 60 people, and the states have an additional 178 people.
"Our biggest challenge is getting these people in place," Clapp told the House Transportation Appropriations Committee.
It remains to be seen if the agency can stay on schedule. Rules implementing the strict new border standards, which require a thorough safety audit of each Mexican applicant, are working their way through the DOT bureaucracy. They probably will be released in March, said a safety agency spokesman.
Also stuck in the works at DOT is a rule that will require hazardous materials drivers to clear an FBI background check. Those checks are supposed to be in place now, under a law passed last year in the wake of the September terrorist attack, but DOT has not been able to work out all the details as quickly as it intended.
Still, drivers should be aware that a new or renewed hazmat endorsement will require the background check -- a process that could take as long as several months. The check, which will require fingerprinting, will be initiated by the state Department of Motor Vehicles when the driver applies for the endorsement.
Clapp said the agency is going to follow up on all endorsements that have been issued since Sept. 11 -- so drivers will not be able to dodge the check by obtaining their endorsement before the rule is in effect.
Meanwhile, Clapp is following through on his promise to make truck safety a more personal issue.
In his public remarks, Clapp now names people who have died in truck-related accidents. One was Karen Hatcher, a schoolteacher in Silver Spring, Nev.
"She did not make it to class on January 10th," Clapp said. "She died when a runoff dual wheel assembly from an approaching truck smashed her husband's pickup truck."
Ms. Hatcher was one of five people, including a truck driver whose rig overturned, named by Clapp in remarks to transportation writers in Washington, D.C.
Clapp said he is naming people to remind himself and the FMCSA staff why they are doing this work. It is not to count statistics, do inspections, issue citations and rules, he said.
"We are here to help make sure sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters . . . get home for dinner tonight."
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