§ 382.303 is the testing rule most likely to reach a driver on the worst day of their career, and it turns on two things: what the accident involved, and whether the driver was cited. Where a commercial motor vehicle operating on a public road in commerce is in an occurrence involving the loss of human life, the employer must test each surviving driver who was performing safety-sensitive functions with respect to the vehicle — for alcohol and for controlled substances, with no citation required. Where instead the accident involved bodily injury to a person who as a result immediately receives medical treatment away from the scene, or one or more motor vehicles incurring disabling damage requiring a tow away, testing is required only if the driver receives a citation under State or local law for a moving traffic violation arising from the accident: within 8 hours of the occurrence for the alcohol test, and within thirty-two hours for the controlled substances test. Call that the eight hours to be CITED; a second eight-hour clock, for administering the test, arrives in the next paragraph and is a different thing sharing a figure. A fatality triggers testing on its own. The other two categories wait on a citation.

The clocks then run against the employer, and they run whether or not anyone is ready. If the alcohol test is not administered within two hours of the accident, the employer must prepare and keep a record of why it was not; if it is not administered within eight hours — this being the eight hours to be TESTED, not the eight hours to be cited — the employer must stop trying and keep the same record. For controlled substances the single deadline is 32 hours, after which attempts cease and the reasons go on file. Those records are submitted to the FMCSA on request. Alongside them sits the driver’s own duty in § 382.303(e), which is short and consequential: a driver subject to post-accident testing must remain readily available for it, or may be deemed by the employer to have refused — and § 9.2 has already established what a refusal is. The same paragraph is careful about what it does not mean. Nothing in the section requires delaying necessary medical attention for injured people, or prohibits a driver from leaving the scene for the period needed to get assistance in responding to the accident or to obtain necessary emergency medical care.

Three further provisions round the section out, and one of them is a genuine relief. A breath or blood alcohol test, or a urine controlled substances test, conducted by Federal, State or local law enforcement or public safety officials acting under their own independent authority counts as meeting this section — provided the test conforms to the applicable requirements and the employer obtains the results. Second, § 382.303(h) excludes three kinds of occurrence entirely: one involving only boarding or alighting from a stationary vehicle, one involving only the loading or unloading of cargo, and one in the course of operating a passenger car or multipurpose passenger vehicle, unless that vehicle was carrying passengers for hire or placardable hazardous materials. Third, § 382.209 puts a prohibition on the driver that has nothing to do with being tested: no driver required to take a post-accident alcohol test shall use alcohol for eight hours following the accident, or until they undergo the test, whichever comes first. That rule exists precisely because the test may be hours away, and a drink taken in the meantime destroys the only evidence that could have cleared them.