FMCSA: Use of Tech Won’t Guarantee Rewards

Van Steenburg

This story appears in the May 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

CINCINNATI — While trucking industry groups generally welcomed a proposal by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to offer rewards to carriers that operate safely, the agency’s safety chief said the use of technologies alone wouldn’t necessarily lead to relief.

Jack Van Steenburg, speaking here at the National Private Truck Council’s annual meeting, cited an example of a fleet that installed devices to limit the top speed of its trucks.

The same fleet recorded more than 700 speeding violations and should therefore have “no credit” for having the speed limiters, Van Steenburg said.

On April 23, FMCSA issued a request for public comment on a program called “Beyond Compliance,” which would reward carriers that voluntarily deploy technologies such as lane departure and anti-collision warning systems or implement safety programs that exceed regulatory requirements.

“The U.S. Department of Transportation and motor carriers have invested millions of dollars in research, development and implementation of strategies and technologies to reduce truck and bus crashes,” the agency said. “FMCSA is evaluating the impacts of considering a company’s proactive voluntary implementation of state-of-the-art best practices and technologies when evaluating the carrier’s safety.”

“We have been advocating this for several years,” Rick Schweitzer, general counsel for NPTC, said in a presentation April 27. “It’s incumbent on us to come up with ideas to make this work.”

Gene Bergoffen, a former director of the National Private Truck Council and safety consultant who has long advocated for the use of alternative compliance methods, said he would like to see a program that puts more emphasis on providing relief in the form of reduced inspections, rather than issuing credits to reduce safety scores that are, in turn, dependent upon inspections.

“As long as a carrier’s performance meets a certain standard and effective safety management remains in place,” Bergoffen said, “you should be able to relieve the carrier of a large number of inspections and other oversight.”

Bergoffen, who has studied safety management practices in Canada and Australia in addition to the United States, said the best program he’s ever encountered is one developed by the Asociacion Nacional de Transporte Privado, an organization similar to NPTC in Mexico.

An analysis by FMCSA in 2009 of the benefits and costs of lane-departure warning systems predicted a reduction of 1,973 injuries and 100 fatalities annually through the use of just that one technology.

In developing its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program in 2010, FMCSA said it found agreement among industry and law enforcement stakeholders that an incentive-based approach to improving carrier safety would be a more effective tool than the current penalty-based system.

To test the concept of Beyond Compliance, FMCSA said it is interested in working with the private sector on demonstration projects but would not consider requests from carriers for safety waivers, exemptions or pilot programs.

“Beyond Compliance would include voluntary programs implemented by motor carriers that exceed regulation requirements and improve the safety of commercial motor vehicles and drivers operating on the nation’s roadways by reducing the number and severity of crashes,” the agency said.

Specifically, FMCSA said it wants to know what technologies would be appropriate and what type of incentives would encourage motor carriers to invest in technology and best practices programs, plus how the agency could verify that the voluntary technologies or safety programs were being implemented.

In its proposal, FMCSA cited an NPTC best practices program as an example of a successful nongovernmental safety program.

FMCSA also highlighted a report by the American Transportation Research Institute in 2011 that detailed possible benefits from alternative compliance, especially for larger fleets that tend not to see a major change in safety performance after traditional compliance reviews, while smaller carriers tend to see bigger gains in safety.

By offering safe fleets benefits, such as a reduced number of inspections or credits on Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) scores, there would be an incentive for other carriers to do the same, said ATRI researcher Dan Murray.