Inside This Issue...

Roadway Safety Foundation (RSF) is offering technical assistance (not direct funding) of $25K to $75K per community group/local government agency, etc. to carry out a Public Information and Education (PI&E) campaign about road safety. RSF’s technical support is for public information and education efforts to help build awareness and support for design, engineering and construction techniques that have been proven to help prevent crashes and minimize deaths and injuries on roadways such as wider lanes and shoulders; lane/pavement markings; other pavement improvements; crash barriers; and better signaling, signing and lighting, just to name a few examples. AAMVA encourages you consider applying for this opportunity established by SAFETEA-LU Section 1411 and administered by the Roadway Safety Foundation (RSF). Download an introduction to the program and the application. Feel free to distribute this information to anyone who may benefit. Further details are available from Cathy Gillen at (202) 857-1200 or the RSF Web site www.roadwaysafety.org.

On July 21, Deputy Secretary of Transportation Vice Admiral Thomas J. Barrett announced a $1.015 million grant to continue federal support of public education efforts to reduce collisions between trains and motor vehicles at highway-rail grade crossings and discourage illegal trespassing along railroad rights of way. Barrett explained that the grant is being provided by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and will support the public outreach and training programs of Operation Lifesaver, Inc. (OLI), a national not-for-profit rail safety organization. An additional $338,332 will be generated in matching funds or services, he added. The federal funds will be used for OLI’s States Assistance Program, which provides up to 50 grants to state organizations that manage railroad safety awareness programs. In addition, the FRA grant will support training programs for OLI’s more than 2,100 volunteer trainers and presenters, specialized communications programs, publications and other related materials. Barrett further stated that the annual FRA grant funding will be used for new OLI initiatives, including production of a training video for commercial truck and bus drivers, development of more outreach resources for the Hispanic/Latino community, creation of new public service announcements, and a special initiative targeting college age and 25- to 30 year-olds. And, in response to the consistently high and relatively unchanged number of trespass deaths in recent years, OLI will renew its emphasis on addressing trespass issues. This grant supports the goals of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation’s 2004 Action Plan for Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety and Trespass Prevention that provides a roadmap for guiding federal, state, local, railroad industry and other efforts to combat these problems. Deputy Secretary Barrett announced the FRA grant at the OLI International Symposium in Covington, Kentucky. Click here for Deputy Secretary Barrett's remarks from event.

The Government Accountability Office released a report to Congressional requestors regarding the certification process for commercial drivers with serious medical conditions. Commercial drivers with serious medical conditions can still meet Department of Transportation (DOT) medical fitness requirements to safely operate a commercial vehicle and thus hold commercial driver's licenses (CDLs). However, there is general agreement that careful medical evaluations are necessary to ensure that serious medical conditions do not preclude the safe operation of a commercial vehicle. Because medical determinations rely in large part on subjective factors that are not captured in databases, it is impossible to determine from data matching and mining alone the extent to which commercial drivers have medical conditions that preclude them from safely driving a commercial vehicle and therefore if the certification process is effective. GAO’s analysis provides a starting point for exploring the effectiveness of the current CDL medical certification process. The analysis of CDL data from DOT and medical disability data from the Social Security Administration, Office of Personnel Management, and Departments of Veterans Affairs and Labor found that about 563,000 of such individuals had CDLs and were determined by the federal government to be eligible for full disability benefits. This represented over 4 percent of all CDLs in the DOT database. The analysis of 12 selected states indicates that most of these commercial drivers still have active licenses. Specifically, for these 12 selected states, about 85 percent had a current CDL even though they had a medical condition from which they received full federal disability benefits. The majority of these drivers were issued a CDL after the driver was approved for full federal disability benefit. Read the report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08826.pdf

On July 16, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced a set of security recommendations for the transportation of certain quantities of hazardous materials across the nation's highways. The recommendations will help to ensure the secure transportation of potentially dangerous materials that could cause a significant impact if used in an act of terrorism. The voluntary guidelines were developed over a three-year period by TSA's Highway and Motor Carrier Division, in close collaboration with government and private sector partners. The resulting recommendations are structured to allow motor carriers and shippers to adopt measures best suited to their particular circumstances or operation. A full list of recommendations can be found on TSA's Web site under www.tsa.gov/highway. TSA recognizes that no one solution fits all motor carriers and circumstances. Therefore, the security action items allow for implementation flexibility based on the assessed vulnerability of a particular process or operation. The goal of the affected motor carrier and shipper should be to implement these security action items to the fullest extent practical. TSA will build on these recommendations by analyzing the effectiveness of the security action items and feedback the Highway and Motor Carrier Division receives from industry. TSA will consider the security action items for development as regulations. Questions and comments from industry may be sent to the TSA Highway and Motor Carrier Division at highwaysecurity@dhs.gov.

On July 16, James F. Ports, Jr., Deputy Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) testified before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructures regarding Oversight of Motor Vehicle Safety Issues. On July 17, Jeffrey F. Paniati, Executive Director of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) testified before the Committee on Environment and Public Works on "Saving Lives on our Nation's Highways." Both of these testimonies are available on the Department of Transportation Web site at http://testimony.ost.dot.gov/test/default.htm.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report to Congress regarding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) entitled "NHTSA’s Improved Oversight Could Identify Opportunities to Strengthen Management and Safety in Some States." In the report the GAO assessed (1) how states have used grant funding to address safety goals, (2) NHTSA’s progress in improving consistency in its management reviews, (3) the usefulness of its management review recommendations, and (4) approaches to further improve safety. In performing this work, GAO reviewed traffic safety data, analyzed state spending patterns, conducted site visits with eight states, and interviewed agency officials. GAO recommends that NHTSA, among other things, increase the usefulness of management review results to identify and address common state challenges and identify options to target safety expertise to states having a high number of fatalities. The Department of Transportation generally agreed with the analysis and conclusions of this report but disagreed with one recommendation, which was revised to address NHTSA’s concerns. View the entire report at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08788.pdf.

To reduce the number of traffic fatalities, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) nearly doubled funding for the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), authorizing $5.1 billion for 2006 through 2009. SAFETEA-LU also added requirements for states to develop strategic highway safety plans that cover all aspects of highway safety, including infrastructure, behavioral (education and enforcement), and emergency medical services projects; develop crash data analysis systems; and publicly report on the top 5 percent of hazardous locations on all their public roads. SAFETEA-LU also set aside funds for a legacy rail-highway crossing program and a new high-risk rural road program. Katherine A. Siggerud of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works with preliminary information on the implementation of HSIP since SAFETEA-LU. It is based on ongoing work that addresses (1) states’ implementation of HSIP following SAFETEA-LU, (2) FHWA’s guidance and assistance for states, and (3) results of HSIP to date, including for the two set-aside programs. To conduct this study, GAO visited 6 states, judgmentally selected based on highway safety attributes, analyzed plans and reports from these 6 states and 19 randomly selected states, and interviewed FHWA and state safety officials. View the testimony online at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081015t.pdf

A bill called the "Resist Offsetting with Additional Debt Act" or the "ROAD Act" (HR 6534) was introduced in House on July 17 to rescind certain earmark projects under SAFETEA-LU for the purpose of eliminating the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. The bill was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. View the text of the legislation for more details.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on the progress that has been made by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in improving medical oversight of commercial drivers. This hearing is in response to the GAO report on CDL holders with serious medical conditions. The hearing will take place at 2167 Rayburn Building in Washington, DC on Thursday, July 24 at 2pm (ET). For more information, contact David Heymsfeld, Democratic Staff Director at (202) 225-4472. Interested parties can hear the hearing online at http://transportation.house.gov/ .

In response to a petition for rulemaking, in 2005 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed to amend Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 111, "Rearview Mirrors" to require straight trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of between 4,536 kilograms (10,000 pounds) and 11,793 kilograms (26,000 pounds) to be equipped with a system capable of providing drivers with a view of objects directly behind the vehicle. More refined data generated since the 2005 notice of proposed rulemaking shows that the sub-population of mid-sized trucks accounts for only four of the estimated 183 fatalities per year due to back-over accidents. In addition, the recently signed Cameron Gulbranson Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007 1 (K.T. Safety Act of 2007) requires NHTSA to revise the federal standard for rearward visibility, specifically to reduce backing crashes involving children and disabled people. Considering these developments, the agency believes it more appropriate to address backing safety of straight trucks as part of the comprehensive effort to address backing safety generally, and that solutions should be formulated after the completion and review of ongoing research and data gathering on backing safety. NHTSA is therefore withdrawing this rulemaking at this time. View the July 21 Federal Register notice for more details.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) publishes a list of information collection packages requiring clearance by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in compliance with Public Law (Pub. L.) 104-13, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, effective Oct. 1, 1995. The SSA has submitted a request for extention of an OMB-approved information collection on the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). H.R. 3295, HAVA of 2002, mandates that states verify the identities of newly registered voters. When newly registered voters do not have driver's licenses or state-issued ID cards, they must supply the last four digits of their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) to their local state election agencies for verification. The election agencies forward this information to their state motor vehicle administration (MVA) that inputs the data into AAMVA's central consolidation system that routes the voter data to SSA’s Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system. Once SSA’s HAVV system has confirmed the identity of the voter, the information will be returned along the same route (in reverse) until it reaches the state election agency. The official respondents for this collection are the state MVAs. View the notice in the July 11 Federal Register for more details.

Legislation (HR 6532) to transfer $8.017 billion to the Highway Trust Fund to offset a projected shortfall in Fiscal Year 2009 was introduced in the House on July 17, 2008. The president’s budget proposal in February projected that the trust fund would show a deficit of at least $3.3 billion in FY 2009 because expenditures have exceeded the trust fund balance. As the price of gas has boomed to more than $4 per gallon, motorists have reduced the number of vehicle miles traveled and thus their gas purchases. Since the trust fund receives the bulk of its revenue from an 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on gasoline sales, transportation observers are concerned that the shortfall forecast will actually be much higher. A new forecast is due from the U.S. Treasury Department in late July. A transfer of $8.017 billion to the Highway Trust Fund would match the exact amount transferred out of the fund into general revenue in 1998 as part of an agreement negotiated to win passage of such provisions as funding guarantees and budget firewalls for the trust fund programs. View the text of the legislation for more details.

AAMVA has confirmed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that Nicole Nason will step down as NHTSA's administrator next month.  Nason began her duties on May 31, 2006. She joined NHTSA from the Department of Transportation, where she was the assistant secretary for governmental affairs since July 2003. Deputy administrator Jim Ports is expected to oversee the agency for the remainder of the Bush Administration.

If you can earn some positive media (get the press to accurately pick up your news) in an age of shrinking newsrooms, particularly when you are a state motor vehicle agency, you get an "A plus." Read the entire blog at http://blog.aamva.org/2008/07/21/two-kids-nab-an-a-plus.aspx

The Fraud Early Warning System (FEWS) helps jurisdictions reduce fraud by coordinating the notice of fraudulent documents encountered and lost/stolen licensing equipment. This service is free for jurisdictions, is easy to use and administer, and is brought to you by AAMVA in partnership with law enforcement and FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier and Safety Administration). Currently, 18 jurisdictions are participating with more coming online. These jurisdictions have found FEWS to be an effective tool in combating document fraud, including fraudulent or stolen driver's licenses/permits, ID cards, Social Security cards, birth certificates, passports, etc. To support this effort AAMVA University is offering three new courses: FEWS Basic, FEWS Advanced, and FEWS Jurisdiction Administrator. These courses are free for jurisdictions, delivered via the web with live instructors and subject matter experts, and will begin on Thursday July 24, 2-4pm EDT. Go to http://aamva.webroom.com , register on the training portal and self-enroll into any of the available courses. Complete course descriptions and information are available on the site. If you have questions or need assistance, e-mail trainer@aamva.org.

The AAMVA room block at the Rosen Shingle Creek is reaching capacity. The hotel is creating a waiting list. Be sure to put your name on the list when you call for reservations. Additional accommodations have been made at an overflow hotel. The Rosen Center (sister property to the Rosen Shingle Creek), located approximately 10 minutes from Rosen Shingle Creek, has availability and will offer the contracted rate of $139 per night. Call for reservations at (800) 800-9840 or (407) 996-9840. You MUST mention the AAMVA conference to ensure this rate. Shuttle service will be provided between the Rosen Center and Rosen Shingle Creek hotels. In addition to the Rosen Center, there are two additional hotels: The JW Marriott is located on John Young Parkway & Central Florida Parkway, approximately a 10-minute drive. Call (407) 206-2300 for reservations. The Westin Imagine is located on the same street as the Rosen Shingle Creek and is approximately a 5-minute drive. Call (407) 233-2200 for reservations. (There is no negotiated rate at the JW Marriott or the Westin Imagine.) AAMVA's 2008 Annual International Conference (AIC) is scheduled to take place at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel in Orlando, Florida, Aug. 24-27, 2008. Register online today!

If you haven’t already done so, please respond to the following surveys:

• Connecticut – Internet Driver Improvement Course (Ends 08/15/2008)
• New Jersey – Driver's Licenses Returned by the Postal Authority (Ends 07/31/2008)
• Pennsylvania – Driver Licensing Locations – Research (Ends 07/31/2008)
• Saskatchewan – Continuous Vehicle Registration (Ends 08/01/2008)
• New Jersey – Abandoned Vehicles (Ends 07/31/2008)
• South Dakota – Nlets Interstate Sharing of Photos (Ends 07/28/2008)