I have decided not to bother, but my partner and our PA's who do a fair amount of occupational medicine are in the process. The online training program is VERY time consuming, and they have to go to Anchorage ( about 400 miles by road ) to take the test. It is expensive. My partner and I both have certification from the FAA to do pilot's physicals, and this is much more annoying. She has been spending 2 hrs a night plodding through the training for the last couple of weeks. It is online, there is no book that you can just pick up and read quickly. As I overhear it as she does the training, it sounds for all the world like a WWII army training film about the horrors of VD. Over and over.
Having said that, and having done lots of CDL's over the years, and listening in to the training, I must say how badly I was doing them in the eyes of the regulators. I was naive enough to be using common sense as to whether I thought a driver should be on the road. If (and that is a big IF) the medical community really does start to follow the rules exactly, there are going to be a whole lot fewer truck drivers on the road. Many of the Federal Highway regs are a lot more stringent than the FAA rules. (Example.. to get a diabetes waiver, a driver who uses insulin has to have a complete reevaluation done by a board certified endocrinologist every 3 months!! Try that in rural America.)
There are currently only 4 or 5 certified physicians in state. My guess is that we will get close to the deadline, they will realize it is going to be impossible to implement the way they envision, and the whole thing will be delayed, revamped, or scrapped entirely.
