Baker gets tough on commercial drivers
Files bill to close license loopholes for truckers
Gov. Charlie Baker filed legislation Friday that would allow the state and the Registry of Motor Vehicles to strengthen commercial driving laws in the wake of a recent RMV failure that led to a West Springfield trucker whose license should have been suspended being charged in the death of seven motorcyclists in a New Hampshire crash.
The “Act to Promote Commercial Driver Safety” would raise standards for commercial driver’s licenses above the federal minimum and eliminate technical gaps between state and federal regulations, according to a report from the state Department of Transportation. Some of those gap-closing measures include a provision that makes texting while driving a commercial vehicle a serious traffic violation that can result in a mandatory license suspension. Another provision requires drivers to use hands-free devices to use cellphones while driving.
It would also lengthen the mandated suspension period for commercial operators who commit multiple serious traffic violations. Suspensions would be upped to 120 days from 60 days for drivers with two violations in a three-year period, and to 240 days from 120 days for drivers who commit three serious violations in the same time frame.
Drivers will have to provide next-day notification to their employer and the registry if they violated traffic laws — meaning that for the first time a commercial driver would be penalized for failing to notify an employer or the registry of violations.
Applicants for commercial driver’s licenses would have to demonstrate a history of good driving and would be ineligible for a license if they have been suspended or disqualified from driving at any time in the past three years.
The latest update from the RMV comes as the agency works to overhaul its policies after coming under fire for having a backlog of out-of-state infraction notifications — including a May 11 Connecticut OUI arrest for West Springfield trucker Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, which should have triggered an automatic license suspension more than a month before he was charged with killing seven motorcyclists in a Randolph, N.H., crash on June 21.
Along with hiring a previously announced deputy registrar for safety, the registry will create a new out-of-state notifications processing unit to “process both incoming and outgoing notifications in a timely manner.”
The registry finished processing a backlog of out-of-state driver’s license violations last week, resulting in a total of 2,039 suspensions issued to 1,607 unique drivers. The suspensions came from notices of infractions that sat unchecked in 53 bins and five boxes in the RMV headquarters in Quincy, plus another 72 boxes dating back to 2011 found in the Concord archives.
MassDOT said Friday the RMV has received 2,275 out-of-state notifications since July 1, “that will result in 221 suspensions of Massachusetts drivers.”
All 5.2 million Massachusetts driver’s license records continue to be checked against the National Driver Registry as well.