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| Detailed Test Result Data Available |
The eleventh annual report of transit industry drug and alcohol test results
for calendar year 2005 has been published and is available for download. The
publication can be obtained from the FTA Office of Safety and Security
Website at:
http://transit-safety.volpe.dot.gov/Publications. The report provides a
summary of the data reported from the industry on the Management Information
System (MIS) report submissions for 2005 and a summary of the data for the
period ranging from 1995 to 2005. In 2005, 3,091 employers were covered by
the FTA drug and alcohol testing regulation (49 CFR Part 655) and 260,045
employees were subject to testing. The positive rate for random drug testing
was 0.79% less than half of the 1.76% rate experienced in 1995. Likewise,
the 2005 violation rate for random alcohol tests was 0.12% less than half of
the violation rate of 0.25% reported in 1995. Even though the 2006 Annual
Reports have yet to be published, the 2006 verified positive drug test rates
and 2006 alcohol violation rates continue to fall. Of the 77,088 pre-employment tests conducted in 2005, 1,692 applicants or 2.42% had a positive test result with 67.0% of those being positive for marijuana, 27.4% positive for cocaine, 5.9% positive for amphetamines, 1.7% for opiates, and less than 1% for phencyclidine (PCP). Of the 140,045 random tests performed on safety-sensitive employees, only 991 or 0.79% tested positive. Of these, 52.0% were positive for marijuana, 39.4% for cocaine, 8% for amphetamines, 3.3% for opiates, and less than 1% for PCP. A comparison of the pre-employment and random test results would indicate that the pre-employment test tends to be more effective at identifying marijuana users than other drug users, where the drugs and/or their metabolites can be detected for much shorter periods of time.  Of the test types, reasonable suspicion had the highest positive rate with 13.11% of the 557 tests conducted. Of the positive reasonable suspicion tests 52.5% were positive for cocaine, 32.8% were positive for marijuana, 14.8% were positive for amphetamines, and 1.6% were positive for opiates. Of 13,790 post-accident tests conducted in 2005, 184 were positive (1.51%) of which 47.3% were positive for cocaine, 39.7% were positive for marijuana, 7.6% were positive for amphetamines, 4.9% were positive for opiates, and 2.2% were positive for PCP. Of the tests that were triggered by an incident (accident or reasonable suspicion observation), cocaine positives outnumbered marijuana positives, and amphetamine positives nearly doubled the random amphetamine positive rate. There were only 1,028 return-to-duty tests performed. As expected, only 1.56%, or 14 individuals, tested positive with over half (57.1%) testing positive for marijuana. Of the 7,223 follow-up tests conducted, 103 or 1.59% tested positive with the majority (51.4%) testing positive for cocaine, 38.8% positive for marijuana, 7.8% positive for amphetamines and 7.1% were positive for opiates. These positive rates are reflective of the addictive nature of each of these substances. Alcohol positive rates were fairly consistent among testing categories except for reasonable suspicion testing that resulted in an alcohol positive rate of 15.16% and return-to-duty testing that had an alcohol positive rate of 0.00%. The positive rates for random, post-accident, and follow-up testing were relatively low at 0.12% for random, 0.17% for post-accident, and 0.26 for follow-up testing. Of each of the safety-sensitive employee categories tested in 2005, revenue vehicle operators had the highest positive rate for all testing categories combined with a drug positive rate of 1.54%. Transit employees that have CDLs, but who do not operate revenue service vehicles, have the second highest drug positive rate with 1.40%, and revenue vehicle and equipment maintenance employees have a 1.11% positive rate. Revenue vehicle controllers/dispatchers and armed security personnel have the lowest rates with 0.68% and 0.54%, respectively reflecting the low number of post-accident tests conducted on this employee classification. Revenue Vehicle Equipment Maintenance employees have the highest reasonable suspicion positive rate with 17.86% while revenue vehicle operators and non-revenue CDL drivers have the highest post-accident positive rates with 1.55% and 2.86%, respectively. Non-revenue vehicle CDL holders have the highest alcohol positive rate of 0.39%. Revenue vehicle operators and revenue vehicle and equipment maintenance employees have alcohol positive rates of 0.25% and 0.27%, respectively. Revenue vehicle controllers/dispatchers and armed security personnel have the lowest alcohol positive rates with 0.12% and 0.08%, respectively. Contractor safety-sensitive employees have a relatively high overall drug positive rate of 2.26%, which is two and a half times greater than the transit employer positive rate of 0.87%. The alcohol positive rate of safety-sensitive contractors and transit employees are more in line with one another. The contractor alcohol positive rate is 0.36%, and the transit employer rate is 0.21%. | ||||
