Your post-accident test has a clock on it
This month I fielded more than one request for post-incident testing, and every caller asked some version of the same question: what’s the timeline? The answer isn’t as clean as people expect.
A WAY, NOT THE WAY
There’s no single answer here — it depends on the work and the regulatory environment it’s done in.
If you have FMCSA-regulated drivers, the windows are set: 32 hours for the urine drug test, and for breath alcohol, reasonable efforts within 2 hours, with attempts ceasing at 8. Miss either and you’re documenting why. Worth knowing that the clock only starts if the accident actually triggers testing, a fatality does it regardless of fault, and short of that you need a citation for a moving violation plus either an injury treated away from the scene or a vehicle towed for disabling damage. Your driver also must stay reachable. Walk off and it can be treated as a refusal.
Outside FMCSA, it’s your policy or your industry’s guidance. Some want testing immediately, any hour. Some hand it off to a healthcare facility. And plenty of employers don’t know what their own policy says.
So, here’s the better answer: dust off the policy manual and have a gander. Check with HR on current procedures. Confirm you’re actually meeting whatever regulatory requirements apply. But most of all, stay consistent. Don’t fall into the trap of testing only when you’ve decided an event was significant enough.
On timing, “as soon as practical.” That’s a phrase from my former life in uniform, where the emergency procedure manuals used it to say when an action had to be performed. Turns out FMCSA uses nearly the same language. Test when the employee is physically safe and able, but inside the allowable window. If you’re in a non-regulated environment, adopting those same time allowances is usually your best bet.
Timely and accurate is the goal. We’re not trying to catch anybody. We’re trying to get a result that isn’t 48 hours old.
This Monday: pull your policy and find the paragraph that defines what triggers a post-accident test. If you can’t find it in two minutes, neither can your supervisor at 11pm.
Worth 15 minutes to look at your program together? Here’s my calendar.
Josh
