Senior Reporter
CSA Problems Continue to Make Scores ‘Unreliable,’ ATA Says
Data and methodology problems continue to undercut the accuracy and reliability of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program of motor carrier measurement scores, according to a new American Trucking Associations white paper.
The ATA review of CSA research showed that scores in at least three of the system’s seven Behavioral Analysis Safety Improvement Categories don’t bear a positive correlation to crash risk.
Even among those that generally do have a positive correlation to crash risk, there are tens of thousands of real-world “exceptions” or “outliers” — carriers with high scores and low crash rates and vice-versa, according to the white paper.
“It may make sense for FMCSA to use scores in those categories that correlate positively with crash risk to prioritize companies for enforcement review,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a Dec. 9 statement. “In the process, FMCSA can verify whether or not the scores paint an accurate picture. But third parties need to know that for the purposes of drawing conclusions about individual carriers, the scores are unreliable.”
The ATA white paper cited past research and data compiled by FMCSA, the American Transportation Research Institute, Wells Fargo Securities, Vigillo Inc. and University of Maryland professor James Gimpel.
