DOT minimum random drug and alcohol testing rates by transportation mode

Every DOT-regulated transportation employer (aviation, transit, rail, trucking/motor carrier, pipeline) must randomly drug- and/or alcohol-test a minimum percentage of its safety-sensitive workforce each calendar year, but each modal agency sets and re-announces its own rate separately, in its own format, based on that mode's industry-wide positive test rate — and DOT's own cross-modal aggregator page (transportation.gov/odapc/random-testing-rates) is not reachable by an automated fetcher (403). No other page assembles the current year's rate across modes; an employer or safety consultant working across modes has to find each agency's own annual notice. Two things this makes visible that a single-mode page cannot: FRA sets three different rates for three employee categories (covered service, maintenance-of-way, mechanical), and FMCSA publishes no annual notice at all — its rate stands in the regulation until it changes. Each record is one mode (and, for FRA, one employee category) with its minimum random testing rate(s), the CFR basis where the source states one, and the industry positive rate that held or moved it. Answers 'what percentage of drivers/pilots/transit employees must be randomly drug tested this year', 'why did the random testing rate change', 'is our testing rate above or below the DOT minimum'.

The data

Where this came from

Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 5 sources this dataset was assembled from.

• federalregister.govhttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/05/2025-22036/notice-of-cy-2026-minimum-random-drug-and-alcohol-testing-rates
• ecfr.govhttps://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/section-382.305
• federalregister.govhttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/01/08/2026-00167/drug-and-alcohol-testing-determination-of-minimum-random-testing-rates-for-2026
• federalregister.govhttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/01/15/2026-00644/transit-random-drug-and-alcohol-testing-rates-for-2026
• federalregister.govhttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/09/2025-22326/pipeline-safety-minimum-random-drug-testing-rate-for-calendar-year-2026

Machine-readable

• data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
• Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
• data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
• How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.

From your own code

Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.

pip install refsource
refsource lookup dot-random-drug-alcohol-testing-rates-by-mode mode_year="FAA CY2026"

npx -y refsource lookup dot-random-drug-alcohol-testing-rates-by-mode mode_year="FAA CY2026"

Set your AI assistant up to use this

Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "referencesource": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project

Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:

When a question needs "DOT minimum random drug and alcohol testing rates by transportation mode", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `dot-random-drug-alcohol-testing-rates-by-mode`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.

What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.

7 records. last verified against source 2026-09-16. due for re-check by 2027-02-15.

Licence. US federal regulation and Federal Register notices — 17 USC 105, no copyright