Groups Ask Foxx to Remove CSA Scores From Public View

This story appears in the Sept. 1 print edition of Transport Topics.

Ten commercial vehicle trade associations have petitioned Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to direct the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to stop posting online the safety scores of individual motor carriers.

The coalition, which includes American Trucking Associations, told Foxx in an Aug. 22 letter the Safety Measurement System scores that are part of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program are the subject of much controversy. The group cited a Government Accountability Office report from February that found significant statistical problems with the SMS scoring.

“Our organizations understand and appreciate the merits of using safety measurements to publicly distinguish carriers that are involved in crashes or cited for violations that are related to crashes from those that are not,” the letter said.

It continued by saying GAO, an arm of Congress, “found that SMS suffers from fundamental data sufficiency and methodology issues that seriously affect the reliability of motor carriers’ scores.”

While Foxx’s office did not respond to requests for comment, FMCSA staunchly defended the program, saying that SMS has improved safety “by making company violations and safety records publicly available to consumers, law enforcement and other businesses.”

“The GAO’s one-size-fits-all approach to analyzing inspection data would require the agency to triple the number of inspections we finance each year to exceed more than 10 million nationwide, which is simply unrealistic under our budget, and would fail to assess the behavior of more than 90% of the entire motor carrier population,” FMCSA spokeswoman Marissa Padilla said.

Joining ATA signatories were the leaders of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, American Moving & Storage Association, the National Private Truck Council, the National Tank Truck Carriers, the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association and the Truckload Carriers Association.

FMCSA regulates bus companies as well as trucking companies, so three bus groups signed: the American Bus Association, the National School Transportation Association and the United Motor Coach Association.

CSA began at the end of 2010 and was designed to rate motor carriers and drivers on safety performance, using safety inspections and traffic citations as a foundation. The data for each carrier are broken into seven categories for analysis and turned into scores, with low numbers being better. Carriers are ranked in relation to similar companies on a percentile basis.

FMCSA uses the scoring for safety interventions aimed at poorly performing carriers and drivers, but also posts much of the information online.

The public posting is the primary issue causing concern. The coalition letter asks Foxx to remove that for now but also wants the SMS calculations to be fixed so that the GAO issues are addressed. The associations did not request that CSA be discontinued.

“The needed improvements to support public display of accurate scores must be a high priority. We recognize that assignment of accurate and consistently reliable scores is a very difficult goal for FMCSA to achieve, but is nonetheless one that the agency must be committed to attaining,” the petition said.

Freight brokers and third-party logistics companies, along with the shippers that retain their services, often read SMS scores, said Robert Voltmann, president of the Transportation Intermediaries Association. He read the letter after it was released publicly.

“When you get this many organizations together to agree on something, it’s impressive. Many of these people wouldn’t be willing to agree that tomorrow is Wednesday,” Voltmann said in a Tuesday interview.

The brokers and 3PLs Voltmann represents also have had trouble with CSA numbers.

“There hasn’t been a single study that shows the numbers are working or don’t at least need to be fixed. They’re not quite ready for prime time,” Voltmann said. TIA staff has been working with FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee to smooth out the system.

While many TIA members read SMS scores, Voltmann said his group would not be disappointed to see them removed from public display.

“No one understands them or knows what they mean. What really is the difference between getting a 60 or a 65?” he asked. TIA would prefer FMCSA to provide a simple red light/green light recommendation for carriers of satisfactory or unsatisfactory, he said.