LoginReasonable Suspicion Training Sharpens Supervisors’ Eye for Impaired School Bus Drivers
RENO, Nev. — With federal safety regulators pressing for alcohol-detection technology on school buses and reports of impaired drivers ticking upward, the last line of defense against a drug- or alcohol-affected driver pulling out of the yard remains one person: The supervisor.
A two-hour certification class at STN EXPO West conference handed those supervisors a legally grounded, step-by-step playbook for recognizing impairment, ordering a test and documenting every move.
The Friday afternoon session, “Supervisory Reasonable Suspicion Training,” satisfies U.S. Department of Transportation regulations and was led by Tonica Lathrop, president of Reno-based Sinnett Consulting Services. She is a 30-year veteran of drug and alcohol compliance work who now advises roughly 1,400 clients across Nevada, California and beyond.
Her central warning: Reasonable suspicion is the single most common point at which an employer gets sued over its drug and alcohol program because ordering a test means accusing someone of impairment. Employers lose those cases, she said, for one of two reasons. They fail to follow their own policy or apply it inconsistently.
“You don’t want to put your head in the sand,” Lathrop said, describing the human temptation to explain away warning signs in an employee, a child or a friend.
Ignoring the indicators, she added, exposes both the district and the individual supervisor to liability if an impaired driver later crashes.
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The Reasonable Suspicion Protocol
Lathrop stressed that the supervisor is rarely the first to notice a problem. Tips usually come from another employee or a member of the public. Whatever the source, she said, the report demands the supervisor’s own investigation. She advised never basing a test solely on hearsay. Instead, supervisors should gather their own documentable evidence before acting.
When indicators are present, she laid out a sequence. First, remove the driver from duty.
“I always stop duty, period,” she said, regardless of the task.
Second, bring in a second observer, a step not required by regulation but one she strongly recommends. Crucially, that second supervisor should not be told what to look for, so their observations stand on their own. Testing should not be delayed while waiting for the observer, she cautioned, because most substances other than marijuana clear the body quickly.
The resulting conversation with the employee must be confidential, not held in a break room or a parking lot. The cause could be explained by a prescription or a medical condition, and a reasonable suspicion test, unlike a random or post-accident test, is not something coworkers should witness.
A refusal of a test by the employee, she noted, is treated as a positive.
Transporting the employee to the collection site carries its own risks. Lathrop recounted two trips in which impaired employees grabbed her steering wheel — once on Interstate 15 in Las Vegas. She warned supervisors never to drive an erratic employee alone or in a personal vehicle, where liability falls on the supervisor and their personal insurance.
She recommended a second person be present during the ride for volatile drivers. Employers should opt to use a mobile collection unit, where available, and arrange a safe ride home. If an employee refuses and drives off, she advised calling 911 and framing the call strictly around safety and facts. And she urged always running both a drug and an alcohol test because impaired drivers frequently have more than one substance in their system.
Above all, document. Court challenges arrive not two weeks later but 18 months later, Lathrop said, when memories have faded. Supervisors should record what was said, who reported it, the employee’s responses, the specific indicators, and the timeline, even if the employer ultimately decides not to test.
She also noted that school districts and companies need to have in their drug and alcohol policies how they will handle an employees who ultimately test to a 0.04 percent blood-alcohol content, the federal threshold for CDL holders to be considered driving while intoxicated. But what if the driver tests below 0.04? They are not fit to drive.
The organization will need to have a policy for how to address the employee, if they are to be reassigned for the rest of the day, they are suspended with or without pay, or they are simply sent home.
A Shifting Drug Landscape
Much of the class addressed how impairment now hides in plain sight. Marijuana, Lathrop said, has been transformed by legalization. The average potency of THC in marijuana has climbed from 2- to 4 percent before legalization to roughly 30 percent when bought from dispensaries. The percentage can be even higher in edibles.
She linked broader legalization to about a 30-percent rise in workplace vehicle accidents and an 8-percent increase in OSHA-reportable injuries.
Lathrop noted that flavored vapes make marijuana far harder to detect by smell. Its telltale sign on the job, she
said, is time distortion such as missed deadlines, tardiness and late pickups worth documenting.
She walked through the rest of the DOT five-panel test — including cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids and PCP in addition to marijuana — then flagged a longer list of threats that do not appear on it, including synthetic drugs,
ketamine, alcohol-spiked energy drinks, and “krokodil.”
The gravest, she said, is fentanyl, now widely used to lace other street drugs. She cited local tragedies, including Reno high school students who died after taking counterfeit pills, and a group near South Lake Tahoe who died in 2024 after using cocaine cut with fentanyl.
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What to Watch For and What Not To
For all the pharmacology, Lathrop kept returning to observation. The indicator list supervisors receive is drawn from court cases, she said, but no single sign is proof. Weariness or a blank stare could mean nothing on its own. Alcohol can justify a test on smell alone but drugs require a pattern.
“You have to build a case,” she said.
Her top physical tell is pupil size. In an average-lit room, a pupil should fill about half the iris and should respond to changes in lighting. A pupil that stays fixed, or an employee who abruptly puts on sunglasses, is a red flag. She also pointed to behavior, speech and body odor, distinguishing fresh alcohol from the “stale” smell that can still fail a next-morning breath test.
And she cautioned supervisors against overplaying the role. “Don’t be a creeper,” she said, waving off binoculars and stakeouts.
Everything a supervisor needs, she said, comes from a straightforward and well-documented conversation.
This article written with the assistance of AI from a session transcript.
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