The DOT’s Office of Inspector General announced that it will audit the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) oversight of commercial driver disqualifications.

FMCSA reviews state commercial driver’s license (CDL) programs annually to determine whether they comply with CDL regulations. After a fatal crash involving a commercial driver in Massachusetts, the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) revealed that it had not systematically processed out-of-state notifications of driver convictions for several years.

Following the crash, during this past summer, RMV issued thousands of CDL suspensions based on previously unprocessed out-of-state notifications.

The audit announcement came the same day that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced an increase in fatalities involving crashes of large trucks and buses. The fatality rate rose 0.9 percent from 2017 to 2018 and the number of deaths involving such vehicles rose from 4,455 people in 2013 to 4,949 in 2018.