Research on crashes involving CMVs has identified driver behavior as an increasingly important factor, highlighting the need for tools to assist federal and state enforcement personnel in addressing this issue. Accordingly, in November 2005, FMCSA outlined an effort to expand the purview of its safety programs beyond the performance of motor carriers to include the behavior of CMV drivers.

Since there was no centralized source of data on the regulatory compliance and safety performance of CMV drivers, the Volpe Center, in support of FMCSA's Analysis Division, developed the Driver Information Resource (DIR), a web-based lookup capability providing crash and inspection histories on 3.8 million CMV drivers. These histories are developed using an innovative process of matching the driver identification information to 13 million crash and inspection "event" records in FMCSA databases.

DIR is now available to all FMCSA and state enforcement personnel by means of secure access on the Volpe Center-developed website, Analysis and Information Online (A&I Online).

The Center is also using DIR to support other FMCSA projects, including:

• Conducting analyses on the relationships of regulatory compliance and crash risk
• Addressing SAFETEA-LU requirements for providing driver information to motor carriers to enable better hiring decisions
• Laying the foundation to support new safety measurement systems to identify unsafe individual CMV drivers and motor carriers

The Volpe Center DIR team is led by Ms. Courtney Stevenson of the Motor Carrier Safety Division and includes Ms. Amy Olanyk and Ms. Nancy Kennedy, also of the Division; Mr. Dennis Piccolo, Ms. Nai Lian, and Mr. Brian Baker of the on-site TRACX contract; and Ms. Nancy Davis of the on-site TRIPS contract.