Qualification of Drivers; Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance; Application for Exemption

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FMCSA-2026-0265]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Qualification of Drivers; Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance; Application for Exemption</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of application for exemption; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> FMCSA requests public comment on the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's (CVSA) request for guidance, which FMCSA is treating as an application for exemption, to allow motor carriers and drivers to rely on a paper copy of the medical examiner's certificate (MEC) as proof of the driver's medical certification until the Medical Examiner's Certification Integration (NRII) final rule is fully implemented in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before March 9, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by Docket Number FMCSA-2026-0265 by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: www.regulations.gov.</E> See the Public Participation and Request for Comments section below for further information. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Dockets Operations, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. Each submission must include the Agency name and the docket number (FMCSA-2026-0265) for this notice. Note that DOT posts all comments received without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information included in a comment. Please see the Privacy Act heading below. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 49 U.S.C. 31315(b), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its exemption process. DOT posts these comments, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice DOT/ALL-14 FDMS (Federal Docket Management System (FDMS)), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/privacy/privacy-act-system-records-notices.</E> The comments are posted without edit and are searchable by the name of the submitter. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ms. Evangela Hollowell; Office of Carrier, Driver and Vehicle Safety Standards, FMCSA; <E T="03">fmcsamedical@dot.gov.</E> If you have questions on viewing or submitting material to the docket, contact Dockets Operations at (202) 366-9826. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation and Request for Comments</HD> FMCSA encourages you to participate by submitting comments and related materials. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Submitting Comments</HD> If you submit a comment, please include the docket number for this notice (FMCSA-2026-0265), indicate the specific section of this document to which the comment applies, and provide a reason for your suggestions or recommendations. You may submit your comments and material online or by fax, mail, or hand delivery, but please use only one of these means. FMCSA recommends that you include your name and a mailing address, an email address, or a phone number in the body of your document so the Agency can contact you if it has questions regarding your submission. To submit your comment online, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/FMCSA-2026-0265/document,</E> click on this notice, click “Comment,” and type your comment into the text box on the following screen. If you submit your comments by mail or hand delivery, submit them in an unbound format, no larger than 8 <FR>1/2</FR> by 11 inches, suitable for copying and electronic filing. FMCSA will consider all comments and material received during the comment period. Comments received after the comment closing date will be filed in the public docket and will be considered to the extent practicable. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Confidential Business Information (CBI)</HD> CBI is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. If your comments responsive to the notice contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private, that you actually treat as private, and that is relevant or responsive to the notice, it is important that you clearly designate the submitted comments as CBI. Please mark each page of your submission that constitutes CBI as “PROPIN” to indicate it contains proprietary information. FMCSA will treat such marked submissions as confidential under the Freedom of Information Act, and they will not be placed in the public docket of the notice. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Brian Dahlin, Chief, Regulatory Evaluation Division, Office of Policy, FMCSA, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001 or via email at <E T="03">brian.g.dahlin@dot.gov.</E> At this time, you need not send a duplicate hardcopy of your electronic CBI submissions to FMCSA headquarters. Any comments FMCSA receives not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket for this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Viewing Comments and Documents</HD> To view comments, as well as any documents mentioned in this preamble as being available in the docket, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> insert FMCSA-2026-0265 in the keyword box, select the document tab and choose the document to review. To view comments, click this notice, then click “Browse Comments.” If you do not have access to the internet, you may view the docket by visiting Dockets Operations on the ground floor of the DOT West Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 366-9317 or (202) 366-9826 before visiting Dockets Operations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Legal Basis</HD> FMCSA has authority under 49 U.S.C. 31136(e) and 31315(b) to grant exemptions from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. FMCSA must publish a notice of each exemption request in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (49 CFR 381.315(a)). The Agency must provide the public an opportunity to inspect the information relevant to the application, including the applicant's safety analysis. The Agency must provide an opportunity for public comment on the request. The Agency reviews the application, safety analyses, and public comments submitted and determines whether granting the exemption would likely achieve a level of safety equivalent to, or greater than, the level that would be achieved absent such exemption, pursuant to the standard set forth in 49 U.S.C. 31315(b)(1). The Agency must publish its decision in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (49 CFR 381.315(b)). If granted, the notice will identify the regulatory provision from which the applicant will be exempt, the effective period, and all terms and conditions of the exemption (49 CFR 381.315(c)(1)). If the exemption is denied, the notice will explain the reason for the denial (49 CFR 381.315(c)(2)). The exemption may be renewed (49 CFR 381.300(b)). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Applicant's Request</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Current Regulatory Requirements</HD> FMCSA published the NRII final rule in 2015 (80 FR 22790, Apr. 23, 2015). The Agency extended the original compliance date several times, most recently on June 22, 2021 (86 FR 32643), with compliance ultimately being required as of June 23, 2025. The NRII rule modernizes how driver medical certification is shared, replacing the outdated paper-based process with a secure, electronic transmission system. The NRII rule mandates that certified medical examiners use specific forms to document physical qualification examinations and issue medical certificates to qualified commercial motor vehicle drivers. Among other changes that were implemented on June 23, 2025, medical examiners are no longer required to issue the original/paper MEC, Form MCSA-5876, to commercial learner's permit (CLP) applicants and commercial driver's license (CDL) holders. CLP applicants and CDL holders are no longer required to submit a paper MEC to their State Driver's Licensing Agency (SDLA) (49 CFR 391.43(g)(2)(ii)). Instead, FMCSA electronically transmits examination results and medical variance information for CLP applicants and CDL holders from the National Registry to the SDLAs. SDLAs post the driver's information on the Commercial Driver's License Information System (CDLIS) driver motor vehicle record (49 CFR 383.71(h)(1)(ii) and (h)(3)(ii); 49 CFR 383.73(a)(7)(ii) and (b)(5)(ii)). In addition, the provisions allowing motor carriers and drivers to rely on paper copies of the MEC for up to 15 days after the certificate was issued expired as of June 22, 2025. 49 CFR 391.23(m)(2)(iii) and (m)(3)(i)(C); 49 CFR 391.41(a)(2)(i)(A) and (a)(2)(ii); 49 CFR 391.51(b)(6)(ii). On July 14, 2025, FMCSA granted a waiver to interstate CDL and CLP holders and to motor carriers to allow them to continue to rely on a paper copy of the MEC as proof of the driver's medical certification for up to 15 days after the date the MEC was issued. On August 21, 2025, FMCSA modified the waiver to allow CDL holders, CLP holders, and motor carri ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━