CSA Is ‘A Win-Win’ for Government, Industry, FMCSA Official Tells Brokers
This story appears in the April 19 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
TUCSON, Ariz. — An official with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration told anxious freight brokers here the agency’s new safety ratings system would not significantly alter their business landscape.
Brokers have expressed concern the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 system could expose them to new legal liabilities and shrink the motor carrier driver pool.
“It’s a win-win for the government and industry,” Eric Ice, FMCSA’s division administrator for Arizona, said here during a panel discussion at the Transportation Intermediaries Association annual convention. “Despite what the rumor mill says, we’re not going to assign safety ratings to drivers.”
However, Ice said CSA 2010 would involve a seismic shift in the way the agency keeps an eye on the safety performance of the nation’s 8 million truck drivers and 725,000 motor carriers.
Ice said the new system, which will replace SafeStat, will plug detailed crash data and roadside inspection reports into its computers and spit out a numeric safety score.
“The big difference is that we have seven indicators now to target national safety violations,” Ice said. “But the big sea change here is that fact that it’s using every safety violation.”
Ice said “there needs to be a new way of doing business” because the number of truck-related deaths on the nation’s highways has statistically “flatlined” in recent years.
But brokers remained skeptical, saying that because they will be able to see the records of truck drivers, they could be dragged into court for using carriers that do not have high scores.
One of those expressing concerns was Robert Voltmann, president of TIA.
“CSA 2010 will change your carrier dynamics,” Voltmann said during his state of the industry speech. “This is going to be a game changer for you.”
Howard Abramson, editorial director of Transport Topics Publishing Group and moderator of the CSA 2010 panel, noted that a new Transport Capital Partners survey showed that roughly half of the nation’s fleets were not ready for CSA 2010, and were relieved that its full implementation was being delayed until 2011 (click here for previous story).
TransCore, a freight matching service, said in a statement that CSA 2010 is expected to result in some “initial confusion,” and cause a “shortage of capacity and new level of complexity in carrier operations” for brokers.
Citing broker insurance expert Mark Yunker, vice president of RH Ahmann, Transcore said “brokers will find it more difficult than ever to qualify carriers in a consistent, reliable manner.”
TransCore added, “Since the new measurements will include all violations, not just out-of-service violations, there is likely to be a sharp increase in the number of carriers receiving interventions. In addition, drivers with bad scores will find it hard to gain employment. This may contribute to a shortage of drivers and truck capacity.”
Panelist Rob Abbott, American Trucking Associations’ vice president of safety policy, said while CSA 2010 will help reduce truck-related fatalities and injuries, it has several flaws.
For instance, the system, as it stands now, will assign the same weight to a crash whether or not it was the driver’s fault, he said.
“So a carrier that’s rear-ended or struck by a drunk driver could be painted as unsafe for having been involved in a crash,” Abbott said.
Also, FMCSA plans to rate a carrier’s measure of exposure or risk by the number of trucks in its fleet, not the number of miles the trucks actually drive, Abbot said.
“This paints an unfair picture for those carriers that have greater asset utilization,” Abbott said.
Another problem with the new measure system is that FMCSA also counts a warning by law-enforcement as a violation that will go on a driver record.
“There’s no due process for that warning. There’s no way to get it removed,” he said.
