FMCSA Alters Safety Plan

This story appears in the Aug. 9 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said last week it is changing how it targets trucking companies for enforcement based on a study of its new CSA safety-monitoring program.

In an Aug. 4 announcement, FMCSA said the change was among several it was making to CSA as it prepares to allow fleets to compare their safety records with other carriers, starting later this month.

The agency announced the changes after Transport Topics reported last month that a study conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that carriers with high rates of violations in two of CSA’s BASICs — driver fitness and cargo securement — do not necessarily have a greater crash risk than other fleets (7-19, p. 1; click here for previous story).

FMCSA said that study matched its own findings, and as a result, it “adjusted how it identifies carriers for investigation so that the BASICs that have the strongest relationship to future crashes receive the most emphasis.”

“In this way, FMCSA will address those carriers with the highest propensity for future crashes, as well as those with the strongest patterns of noncompliance,” the agency said.

The two categories include violations such as “being properly licensed, carrying medical cards to allow verification that a driver meets the medical qualification standards, adequately securing cargo and properly packaging and handling hazardous materials,” FMCSA said.

FMCSA’s new safety program — CSA, or Compliance, Safety and Accountability — is built on seven categories of violations called BASICs:

• Unsafe driving.

• Fatigued driving.

• Alcohol and drugs.

• Vehicle maintenance.

• Crash indicator.

• Cargo securement.

• Driver fitness.

The agency also said that carriers on Aug 16 would be able to see for the first time how their violations stack up against other companies’.

FMCSA also said it is changing the way in which it calibrates fleets’ exposure for crashes to a combination of miles traveled and power units in the unsafe driving and crash indicator BASICs.

Within those two categories, the peer groupings will change to using the number of crashes or inspections from the number of trucks, FMCSA said.

The agency said it also will change how it ranks carriers’ performance in the drugs-and-alcohol BASIC by using the number of inspections, rather than the number of trucks, to group carriers.

In addition, FMCSA said it was changing how severely the CSA system treats some roadside inspection violations, but the agency did not specify which violations.

FMCSA “will employ a more strategic approach to addressing motor carriers with a history of size-and-weight violations, rather than counting these violations in the cargo-related BASIC; the new ap-proach will include alerts to roadside inspectors when carriers have a history of size-and-weight violations.”

FMCSA said the changes “will allow the agency to more effectively identify motor carriers with safety-performance and compliance problems, thereby raising the bar for safety on the nation’s roads.”

Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for American Trucking Associations, said the federation was “pleased” the agency is responding to industry concerns, but some uncertainty still exists.

“We are puzzled by FMCSA’s justification to use certain BASICs as a tool to prioritize carriers for intervention — when scores in those BASICs don’t speak to future crash risk,” he said. “The purpose of CSA 2010 is to focus FMCSA’s limited resources where they would be most effective. We believe it would make sense to devote those resources to carriers who are more crash prone.”

Abbott said UMTRI’s findings “may suggest that the means by which scores are derived in those categories — such as the relative weighting of violations — need to be revisited.”

Steve Keppler, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said he believed FMCSA’s announcement is “consistent” with what agency officials have been saying about trying to improve the program.

“It’s clear that they are doing things as they hear more information,” Keppler said.

FMCSA said it still expects to proceed with CSA according to its previously announced schedule, which calls for SafeStat scores to be replaced by CSA during the fall and winter.

A phasing-in of CSA’s new enforcement tools would follow after that is completed.

Keppler said there are still some states that have “some question . . . with respect to what the implementation plan is,” but that FMCSA is working to address their concerns.