Implementation Guidelines - Federal Transit Administration - U.S. ...

Chapter 6. TYPES OF TESTING
Six types of testing are required by
Subpart E (49 CFR Part 655) of the FTA
drug and alcohol rule. The six categories
include:
• Pre-employment (drug test only)
• Reasonable suspicion
• Post-accident
• Random
• Return-to-duty
• Follow-up
In addition to these six types of testing,
transit systems with over 2,000 covered
safety-sensitive employees are also required
to perform blind sample testing as a quality
assurance measure for the testing laboratory
(§40.103).
Section 1. PRE-EMPLOYMENT
TESTING
The purpose of pre-employment testing
is to identify applicants who have exhibited
high risk behavior (i.e., consumed a
prohibited drug) in the recent past. This
behavior can impact the workplace and
presents an unacceptable safety risk to the
employee, coworkers, passengers, and the
general public. Pre-employment testing
identifies those employees who could bring
a substance abuse problem into your transit
agency.
Pre-employment Drug Testing
The FTA regulation (§655.41) requires
that all applicants for employment in safetysensitive
positions or individuals being
transferred into safety-sensitive positions
from non-safety-sensitive positions must be
given a pre-employment drug test.
Applicants may not be assigned safetysensitive
functions unless the individual has
a verified negative test result.
When an existing covered employee has
not performed a safety-sensitive function for
90 consecutive calendar days and the
employee has not been in the employer’s
random testing pool during that time, the
employee is required to take a preemployment
drug test and obtain a negative
test result prior to the reassignment of
safety-sensitive duties. The reason for the
Chapter 6. Types of Testing 6-1 August 2002