FMCSA Sticking to Timeline for Implementation of CSA

This story appears in the June 28 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration remains “absolutely” committed to the current timeline for rolling out CSA 2010, Administrator Anne Ferro said.

“It is a component-oriented timeline to ensure that everyone is with us every step of the way and that we get every piece of it right every step of the way,” Ferro told Transport Topics after a June 23 congressional hearing.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, said that while Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 — FMCSA’s new safety ratings system — was “an evolutionary change to the better . . . there are a number of legitimate concerns about the timeline for implementation and specific aspects of it.”

DeFazio said he was particularly concerned that the agency was pressing ahead with its phased implementation schedule through the end of this year and into 2011 before the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has finished its review of FMCSA’s CSA pilot programs.

Those concerns were echoed by Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.), the subcommittee’s top Republican.

“That study’s not going to be completed until December of this year . . . but it seems like everything’s being done on this before you even get the result of this study,” he said.

Ferro told the committee that during the “30-month pilot . . . we have accumulated an enormous amount of information in testing this system” and have “been able to use preliminary findings both to identify the effectiveness as well as the efficiency improvements in this new CSA process.”

“As far as a first phase, we’re very confident this is the right step to take this year,” she said.

DeFazio also said that with the budgetary constraints many states are facing, he was “not certain this is a realistic timeline.”

Keith Klein, chief operating officer of Transport Corporation of America, said the trucking industry “has a number of serious concerns about how CSA 2010 will work that, if not addressed, will have a dramatic impact on motor carriers and on highway safety.”

Klein, who testified on behalf of American Trucking Associations, raised the issues of crash accountability and how FMCSA measures a fleet’s exposure to crashes, two areas the agency has said it’s working to change.

A third concern, Klein said, was that “CSA 2010 counts both citations and warnings for moving violations and assigns them the same weight.”

Klein said several states require officers to have probable cause before inspecting a truck: “In these states, we believe it is common for enforcement officials to stop trucks for trifling offenses and issue warnings for justification to conduct inspections. As a result, carriers op­erating in these states are disproportionately impacted and likely have worse driver violation scores.”

Those warnings, which can’t be appealed, have a dramatic effect on a carrier’s CSA score.

Klein said that for his company, 65% of the fleet’s CSA points for unsafe driving are the result of speeding violations and “of that only 25% were situations where citations were issued to our drivers,” but the bulk of the points were result of a warning being issued to justify an inspection.

Klein added that 45% of his company’s points in the unsafe driving category came from warnings, and that more than half of those “come from three states which are probable-cause states.”

Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) said he thought the probable-cause issue “poses huge issues with the validity” of FMCSA’s data.

Ferro defended the system, saying the initial review of the pilot results shows that the agency has “achieved a 35% increase in investigations using this approach — in other words, we not only reached more carriers, we did so with greater efficiency.”

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said the driver group shares “the concerns about warning tickets and at-fault accidents.”

FMCSA said in April it intends to open the CSA 2010 system up to the public later this year and begin using its series of new interventions to monitor carriers.

That, Ferro said, will be followed up with a proposed rule to change how the agency assigns carriers their safety fitness determination next year.

Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Interim Executive Director Steve Keppler said states were concerned they may lack the resources to implement CSA 2010 and that they may not be able to meet FMCSA’s schedule.