Overview
A driving record, usually called a motor vehicle record or MVR, is the state’s file on a licensed driver. It comes from the licensing agency rather than a court. That makes it different from every other component of a background check, because a federal privacy law controls who is allowed to request it at all.
That law matters more than most employers realize, because the permission it gives employers is narrower than the way employers actually use it. The rest follows from there.
Throughout this page, “screening company” refers to the outside firm an employer hires to run the check. In the law it is called a consumer reporting agency, or CRA.
What an MVR Shows
Contents vary by state, but a record generally includes:
- License status, meaning valid, expired, suspended, revoked, or canceled
- License class and endorsements, such as a commercial class with a hazardous materials endorsement
- Restrictions, such as corrective lenses or a required ignition interlock device
- Moving violations and the convictions attached to them
- Accidents, where the state records them
- Suspensions and revocations, with the reasons
- Points assessed under the state’s system, where one exists
- Serious offenses, including driving under the influence and reckless driving
It generally does not include parking tickets, non-moving violations, or anything that happened in a vehicle without resulting in a citation. Our article on what an MVR is covers the report itself in more detail.
Who Can Legally Pull a Driving Record
The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 prohibits state motor vehicle departments from releasing personal information out of a driving record, except for a specific list of permitted uses written into the statute. It exists because state DMVs used to sell this data to anyone who asked.
Employment appears on that list, but the employment entry is narrower than most people assume:
The employment permission in the DPPA is written for commercial drivers. The statute permits release to an employer or its agent to obtain or verify information about the holder of a commercial driver’s license, where the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act requires it. There is no equivalent blanket permission covering ordinary employment. For a non-CDL role, an employer is relying on a different permitted use, most often the driver’s own written consent.
That is why the authorization form carries more weight here than it does for most components. Take a delivery driver in a personal vehicle, or a sales representative who travels. For anyone outside the commercial licensing system, consent is often what makes the request lawful in the first place. It is not a formality layered on top of a permission the employer already had.
The statute also treats some data more strictly than the rest. Photographs, Social Security numbers, and medical information are classed as highly restricted, and releasing them requires express consent with only narrow exceptions.
Enforcement has teeth. Obtaining record information for a purpose the statute does not permit is unlawful, as is obtaining it by false representation. Violations can carry criminal fines, a state motor vehicle department with a practice of substantial noncompliance faces civil penalties, and an individual whose information was misused may bring a civil action.
Why Employers Check Driving Records
- The role requires driving. Delivery, transport, field service, home health, and sales roles all put an employee behind a wheel on company time.
- Insurance requires it. Commercial auto insurers frequently set MVR standards as a condition of coverage, and a driver who fails them cannot be assigned to a vehicle regardless of what the employer thinks.
- Regulation requires it. For commercial drivers the check is not optional and the timing is prescribed.
- Negligent entrustment exposure. An employer who hands vehicle keys to someone with a known dangerous record owns part of what happens next.
The last point is why employers with vehicles tend to re-check existing drivers rather than checking only at hire. A record that was clean 3 years ago tells you nothing about today.
Commercial Drivers and DOT Requirements
Where a role requires a commercial driver’s license, federal regulation replaces employer discretion with a schedule.
At Hire
Within 30 days of the start of employment, the carrier must request the driver’s motor vehicle record covering the prior 3 years. It must request it from every licensing authority where the driver held a license during that period. Separately, the carrier must investigate the driver’s safety performance history with Department of Transportation regulated employers over the same 3 year period.
Every Year After
At least once every 12 months the carrier must obtain a fresh motor vehicle record and review it, to determine whether the driver still meets minimum safe driving requirements or has become disqualified. The regulation instructs carriers to give great weight to speeding, reckless driving, and operating under the influence, on the reasoning that those specifically indicate disregard for public safety.
The Driver Qualification File
All of this lives in a file the carrier must keep for each driver. The file also holds the employment application, the medical examiner’s certificate, the road test certificate, and the driver’s annual list of traffic convictions. It is the first thing an auditor asks for.
Due Process for the Driver
Before an application is submitted, the carrier must tell the applicant that previous employers will be contacted about safety performance history. It must also notify the driver in writing of their rights regarding what those investigations return. Commercial drivers have a specific correction process here that non-commercial applicants do not.
Drug and alcohol testing requirements sit alongside these. Our drug testing page covers them, including the Clearinghouse query obligations and the point that a state medical marijuana card carries no weight for a federally regulated driver.
CDLIS and the PSP Report
Two federal systems sit alongside the state driving record for commercial drivers, and neither is an MVR. Employers who run only an MVR are missing most of what these two hold.
CDLIS Answers Which States to Ask
The Commercial Driver’s License Information System is a nationwide index of commercial licenses, maintained so that the rule of one driver, one license, one record can be enforced. Before it existed, a driver could collect licenses in several states and spread violations across them so no single record looked bad.
CDLIS does not hold the driving history itself. It holds the pointer. A CDLIS search returns which state or states hold a commercial record for that driver, which is what tells a carrier where to send its MVR requests.
That makes it the practical companion to the federal requirement to obtain records from every licensing authority where the driver held a license in the preceding 3 years. Without CDLIS, a carrier is relying on the driver to disclose every state accurately. With it, the search list is built from the index rather than from memory.
PSP Holds What the MVR Never Sees
The Pre-Employment Screening Program is run by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and draws from its Motor Carrier Management Information System. A PSP report contains:
- 5 years of crash data, covering DOT reportable crashes with the date, location, and whether the crash involved injuries, fatalities, or a tow away
- 3 years of roadside inspection history, including every inspection, the violations recorded, and whether the driver or vehicle was placed out of service
A roadside violation is not a conviction, which is exactly why PSP shows things an MVR does not. An inspector can record an hours of service violation, a logbook problem, or an equipment defect without any citation ever reaching a court. Nothing about it will appear on a state driving record. It sits in the federal inspection data instead, which is where PSP finds it.
The reverse is also true. PSP does not show license status, suspensions, or the traffic convictions that make up an MVR. The 2 reports answer different questions and neither substitutes for the other.
The Rules Attached to PSP
- Written consent is required. A carrier may not pull a PSP report without the driver applicant’s written authorization.
- It is for pre-employment only. PSP may be used to screen prospective drivers. It is not a monitoring tool for people already employed.
- It is not mandatory. Unlike the MVR schedule, no regulation requires a PSP check. It is widely used because it surfaces safety history that nothing else does.
- The data refreshes roughly monthly, so a very recent inspection may not appear yet.
- An empty report is common and means nothing bad. Only drivers who have had a crash or an inspection appear in the underlying system at all.
Drivers can request their own PSP record at any time, and can subscribe to notifications when it changes. For anyone driving commercially, that is the equivalent of pulling your own credit report before applying for a loan.
How Long Violations Stay
There is no single answer, because 2 different clocks apply and they rarely match.
| The State’s Clock | Each state decides how long it keeps a violation on the record and how long points remain. Ranges commonly run 3 to 10 years, and serious offenses such as driving under the influence often stay far longer or permanently. |
| The Federal Clock | Where an MVR is supplied through a screening company, it is a consumer report and the FCRA’s age limits apply to non-conviction items. Convictions carry no federal time limit. |
So a violation can be off the record in one state and still visible in another. A record pulled directly from a state agency can also differ from one supplied through a screening company. Neither is wrong. They are answering slightly different questions.
Points, Suspensions, and License Status
Most states assign points to moving violations and suspend a license once a driver accumulates enough within a set period. The systems are not comparable across states. The same offense can carry 2 points in one state and 6 in another, and a few states use no point system at all.
This causes a specific problem for multi state employers. A hiring standard written as a maximum number of points is not portable, because the number means something different depending on where the license was issued. A standard written around the underlying conduct, such as a major violation within the past 3 years, travels correctly.
License status is the more decisive field in practice:
- Valid. The license is current and unrestricted.
- Expired. Often administrative and frequently fixable within days.
- Suspended. Temporarily withdrawn, sometimes for reasons unrelated to driving, including unpaid fines or, in some states, unpaid child support.
- Revoked. Canceled outright, requiring reapplication rather than reinstatement.
- Restricted. Valid subject to conditions, such as daylight only, corrective lenses, or an ignition interlock.
A suspension for an unpaid fine and a suspension for a repeat impaired driving offense appear in the same field and mean entirely different things. The reason code matters more than the status word.
Non-DOT and Gig Drivers
Most people who drive for work are not commercial drivers, and the rules are looser rather than absent.
For employees driving a personal vehicle on company business, there is no federal schedule for checking or re-checking. The employer sets the standard, and it is usually the commercial auto insurer that dictates what that standard has to be. Because the DPPA’s employment permission is written for commercial licensing, these checks generally rest on the applicant’s written consent.
Gig and platform drivers introduce a further wrinkle. Where the platform treats the driver as an independent contractor rather than an employee, a screening performed for the platform may not be an employment purpose consumer report in the usual sense, and practices differ. Many platforms also run continuous monitoring, which re-checks the record on an ongoing basis rather than only at onboarding. Continuous monitoring is lawful, but it is a separate arrangement that requires its own disclosure and authorization, not something the original hiring authorization silently covers.
The Rules Employers Must Follow
Three rules apply. Each has its own page on this site, so this is the summary.
Have a Lawful Reason to Request It
The DPPA restricts release regardless of anything else. For commercial drivers the statute supplies the permission directly. For everyone else, the applicant’s written consent is normally what makes the request lawful, which means the authorization is doing real work rather than paperwork.
Get Written Permission First
When a screening company supplies the record, it is a consumer report. The employer must give a standalone written disclosure and obtain written authorization before requesting it. See our FCRA overview.
Follow the Steps Before Rejecting Someone
If the record is going to cost the candidate the job, the employer must first send a preliminary notice with a copy of it. It then has to allow time to respond or correct an error before issuing the final decision. MVRs carry real error rates, particularly around identity matching and dispositions that were never updated after a case resolved. See the adverse action process.
For Applicants
- Pull your own record first. Every state sells you a copy of your own driving record, usually for a small fee. It is the single best way to find a surprise before an employer does.
- Check your license status, not just your violations. Administrative suspensions happen quietly. Unpaid fines, a missed insurance filing, or a paperwork lapse can suspend a license without the driver ever being told in a way they noticed.
- Clear an expired license before you apply. It is usually a same week fix and it reads far worse on a report than it deserves to.
- Know which states hold your history. If you have been licensed in more than one state in recent years, records may exist in each. Commercial employers are required to check all of them.
- A dismissed charge should not appear as a conviction. Court outcomes are not always transmitted back to the licensing agency. If your record shows a conviction for something that was dismissed or reduced, that is a correctable error.
- If the report is wrong, dispute it. Our guide to disputing a background check covers the process.
Best Practices
- Pull driving records only for roles that actually involve driving, and write down which roles those are
- Confirm you have a lawful basis under the DPPA before the request goes out, not after
- Write hiring standards around the conduct rather than around a point total, since points are not comparable between states
- Ask your insurer what its MVR standard is, since that is frequently the real constraint
- Re-check existing drivers on a schedule instead of relying on a record from the hire date
- Treat a suspension reason code as more important than the suspension itself
- Set up continuous monitoring with its own disclosure and authorization rather than assuming the hiring form covers it
- Give candidates a genuine chance to explain or correct a record before the decision is final