FMCSA Panel Seeks Database to Find, Track Safety Violators

A Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration advisory committee last week recommended that the agency set up a database to identify and track trucking company officials, supervisors and other key “persons of influence” who exhibit “patterns of safety violations.”

The new database would be used not only to locate and remove industry “bad actors,” but to block “new entrants” and officers, managers and supervisors who have a history of unsafe practices from reincarnating their unsafe companies with different names, or switching to other employers.

The committee also forwarded a recommendation that FMCSA perform an initial safety audit of new motor carriers within six months after they are given operating authority, rather than the 18 months currently required by federal statute.

William Bronrott, FMCSA’s deputy administrator, told Transport Topics that the agency would give “serious consideration” to the committee’s recommendations.

“As part of the new entrant registration process, FMCSA should compare new registrant information against the database of individual violators to determine whether or not the new registrant should be granted entry,” said the June 21 report by the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee.

Some members of the committee wanted the recommendation to call for the agency to do safety audits before granting a carrier operating authority, but ultimately agreed to the six-month compromise after agency officials suggested that FMCSA and state inspectors might not have the resources to do the early inspections.

“I think the committee should embrace doing the safety review upfront,” said Todd Spencer, a committee member and executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

“We’re giving DOT numbers out carte blanche,” said committee member Thomas Jacques, a master patrol officer with the Pittsburgh police department who coordinates the city’s motor carrier enforcement team. “I can put down Daffy Duck as my name and I’ve got a DOT number.”

Although the committee has studied the detection problems associated with unsafe officers and supervisors for more than a year, its recommendations are timely.

FMCSA is currently redoubling its efforts to identify reincarnated carriers — those who shut down their operations and reopen under a new name and address to hide safety violations — after a bus operated by a North Carolina company with a bad safety history crashed in Virginia, killing four passengers and injuring 53.

Since the bus crash, the Department of Transportation has offered several new policy proposals designed to raise the bar for passenger carrier safety, including a provision that would give the department greater authority to pursue unsafe reincarnated bus and truck carriers by establishing a federal standard.

While the committee’s recommendation, if implemented, would improve ferreting out reincarnated carriers from the larger group of new entrants to the trucking business, it would set in motion a deeper screening process. 

The committee said the list of individuals who should be screened should include owners, directors, chief executive officers, chief financial officers, safety directors, vehicle maintenance supervisors, driver supervisors and “any person, however designated, exercising controlling influence over the operations of a motor carrier.”

Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for American Trucking Associations and a member of the committee, said creating a database would go a long way toward ridding the industry of unsafe players who slip through the cracks in the system.

FMCSA currently monitors the safety performance of truck drivers and motor carriers, but the unsafe actions of driver supervisors, dispatchers and head mechanics can go undetected or be swept under the rug, Abbott said.

For instance, the new database would attempt to identify supervisors who push truck drivers to violate hours-of-service regulations or maintenance supervisors who encourage company mechanics to cut corners.

“There’s no record that they are responsible or culpable,” Abbott added. “We may know that this motor carrier has serious problems, but it really wasn’t attributable to that individual.”

Abbott said carriers should have access to the FMCSA database.

“The most effective way to empower enforcement is to give the tools to the industry to identify those individuals and keep them out of the industry,” Abbott said.

FMCSA’s current process to block unsafe carriers is presently the subject of a Government Accountability Office study.

A 2009 GAO study found that more than 1,000 truck and bus companies had reincarnated successfully with different names after FMCSA had shut them down for safety violations ranging from suspended licenses to possible drug use.

GAO said that in 2008, FMCSA instituted a process to identify violators by checking applicant information against information of carriers performing poorly, but it noted that the agency “still faces legal hurdles, such as proving corporate successorship, to deny the company operating authority.”

Agency spokesman Duane De-Bruyne said every application is reviewed, and FMCSA is “committed to continual improvement in every aspect of the agency’s operations and duties.”