I guess they’ve made some recent changes. I was basing this off of hearing DOT officers say “data Qs just end up on my desk at the end of the day” in a smug kinda way.

“DataQs challenge for an FMCSA violation is usually overseen by the state agency or FMCSA office that entered the original inspection or violation into the system — not solely by the individual officer who wrote it. The request gets routed through the official DataQs system to the “data owner,” which is typically the state DOT, highway patrol, state police CMV division, or an FMCSA division office.
The issuing officer can still play a role, but historically the amount of influence varied a lot by state:
In many states, the reviewing agency would contact the inspecting officer for clarification, notes, supporting documents, or to ask whether they agreed with changing/removing the violation.
In practice, some challenges were effectively decided by supervisors or review personnel relying heavily on the officer’s input.
However, the officer was not supposed to be the sole final authority over the challenge.
Recently, FMCSA tightened the rules specifically because many drivers and carriers complained that officers were “reviewing their own homework.” In 2026 FMCSA announced revised DataQs requirements that:
prohibit the issuing/inspecting officer from being the decision-maker on challenges involving their own inspection,
require more independent multi-stage review procedures,
and require better explanations for denials. “

From LordGPT