DOT Cuts Random Drug Testing Amount in Half

In case you didn't know it, the DOT and the FMSCA has cut the required amount of random drug testing in half.

The required amount of random drug testing was cut in half to only 25%. The change is applicable whether the random pool your company’s employees are in is made up of only your own employees or a consortium pool made up of employees from multiple companies.

This is not the first big cut in DOT random testing requirements

When the DOT Drug Free Workplace regulations came out in 1996 the required random drug testing percentage was 50% of the average number of drivers in the pool and 25% for random alcohol testing. Also drug and alcohol screening were required for pre employment at that time.

But the DOT keeps track of how the testing regulations are working out industry wide and makes adjustments to the requirements based on that research. In one case they eliminated pre-employment alcohol testing and a few years after the regulations came into effect they reduced the amount of random alcohol testing from 25% to 10%.

Why it's great news

This is all great news in many ways as the DOT has seen a reliably low rate of positive results on random drug tests and felt it safe to reduce the amount of random drug testing needed. That also means less money spent on testing for employers and less employee time lost in testing related activities.

If you want to know more about the required testing rates and how much drug and alcohol testing your company is required to do you should check out the blog post for that right here.