574
Opinion of the Court
S. Rep. No. 101-116, pp. 27-28 (1998). The two primary House Committees shared this understanding, see H. R. Rep. No. 101-485, pt. 2, p. 57 (1990) (House Education and Labor Committee Report); id., pt. 3, at 34 (House Judiciary Committee Report). Accordingly, two of these Committees asked "the Secretary of Transportation [to] undertake a thorough review" of current knowledge about the capabilities of individuals with disabilities and available technological aids and devices, and make "any necessary changes" within two years of the enactment of the ADA. S. Rep. No. 101-116, at 27-28; see H. R. Rep. No. 101-485, pt. 2, at 57; see also id., pt. 3, at 34 (expressing the expectation that the Secretary of Transportation would "review these requirements to determine whether they are valid under this Act"). Finally, when the FHWA instituted the waiver program it addressed the statutory mandate by stating in its notice of final disposition that the scheme would be "consistent with the safe operation of commercial motor vehicles," just as 49 U. S. C. App. § 2505(f) (1988 ed.) required, 57 Fed. Reg. 31460 (1992).
And yet, despite this background, the regulations establishing the waiver program did not modify the general visual acuity standards. It is not that the waiver regulations failed to do so in a merely formal sense, as by turning waiver decisions on driving records, not sight requirements. The FHWA in fact made it clear that it had no evidentiary basis for concluding that the pre-existing standards could be lowered consistently with public safety. When, in 1992, the FHWA published an "[a]dvance notice of proposed rule-making" requesting comments "on the need, if any, to amend its driver qualification requirements relating to the vision standard," id., at 6793, it candidly proposed its waiver scheme as simply a means of obtaining information bearing on the justifiability of revising the binding standards already in place, see id., at 10295. The agency explained that the "object of the waiver program is to provide objective data
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