What is it?

The Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) is a screening tool that allows motor carriers and individual drivers to purchase driving records from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA) Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS). Records are available for 24 hours a day via Web request.

Driver Information Resource records (DIR) purchased through PSP contain the most recent 5 years of crash data and 3 years of roadside inspection data from the FMCSA MCMIS system. The PSP will only contain MCMIS information.

FMCSA developed the PSP system to make safety performance information electronically available for pre-employment screening purposes which are mandated by Congress in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, Title 49 U.S. Code, section 31150 Public Law 109-59 Section 4117. FMCSA believes that making this driver data available to potential employers and operator-applicants will improve the quality of safety data and help employers make more informed decisions when hiring commercial drivers. The PSP provides more rapid access to commercial driver safety performance information than was previously available under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or Privacy Act requests.

Motor carriers may request Driver Information Resource records only for the purpose of conducting pre-employment screening and are required to obtain written consent before a driver's information is released from PSP. Individual drivers or operator-applicants may purchase their own Driver Information Resource record at any time.

PSP only contains MCMIS inspection and crash information that is uploaded into MCMIS by FMCSA Federal staff and State partners.

Non-motor carrier entities like insurance companies will not be able to access driver information. The only allowed use of information from PSP is to conduct pre-employment screening.

Prospective driver applicants should look out for an authorization form that looks like this one here (right).