The federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability program is in danger of turning its focus from its original intent — to reduce truck-related crashes, fatalities and injuries, American Trucking Associations said Thursday.
A white paper written by Rob Abbott, ATA’s vice president of safety policy, said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration must guard against revising the goal of the program from identifying those carriers that are the crash-prone, to highlighting the importance of regulatory compliance.
See related editorial: ‘Toward Crash Accountability’
FMCSA recently altered two of the CSA rating categories, changes that ATA and some other industry stakeholders have said puts more of an emphasis on regulatory compliance than identifying those carriers and drivers that are in need of FMCSA intervention.
“According to the first paragraph of the CSA methodology, the goal of CSA is to implement more effective and efficient ways for FMCSA, its state partners, and the trucking industry to reduce commercial motor vehicle crashes, fatalities, and injuries,” the white paper said.
“Logically, scores in each of the measurement categories should reliably identify carriers more likely to cause crashes. However, in some instances, they do not,” it said.
