The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Tuesday announced a slate of changes to its safety rating system designed to ratchet up enforcement of hazardous materials carriers and mitigate an inspection bias against flatbed haulers.
“Motor carrier industry and enforcement stakeholders have noted that motor carriers predominantly operating open deck trailers (e.g., flatbeds) have significantly higher Cargo-Related BASIC percentiles than those for other groups of operators, because load securement issues for these types of carriers are more readily apparent during roadside inspections,” the agency said in a posting in Tuesday’s Federal Register.
As a result, the agency said it was strengthening the Compliance, Safety, Accountability, or CSA, program’s Vehicle Maintenance BASIC by moving cargo/load securement violations from the Cargo-Related BASIC to the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC.
The agency also said it was renaming the Cargo-Related BASIC the Hazardous Materials BASIC, which will better identify hazmat-related safety problems and change how hazmat carriers are classified to allow for increased intervention scrutiny.
“The presence of [hazmat] can greatly exacerbate the consequences of crashes and cargo spills,” FMCSA said.
“Because the current Cargo-Related BASIC includes both hazmat violations and load securement violations, some motor carriers with hazmat compliance issues do not rise above the FMCSA’s intervention threshold due to the relative weight of general cargo securement violations.”
