Opinion: Don’t Lose Sleep Over CSA
Attorney
This Opinion piece appears in the Aug. 2 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
I have been following with interest the published articles covering the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s new CSA program. The articles include a front-page story in the June 28 edition of this newspaper headlined “CSA Training Could Affect O-Os, Some Industry Officials Worry.”
My advice is that no carrier operating under CSA, owner-operators included, should lose any sleep over the new safety program’s employment classifications.
Substantive changes in operations and requirements relative to compliance with safety regulations are not being adopted under FMCSA’s new program. Carriers, driver employees and “independent businesspersons” — those whom I believe have been unfortunately tagged as “owner-operators” — can continue to conduct operations under the same regulations — and simple common sense — when dealing with safety issues.
The CSA program essentially is built around new techniques for quantifying on-the-road safety performance by carriers and “operators.” Scoring will be done by the application of FMCSA’s new Safety Measurement System, which weighs the violations of each carrier and operator and yields a percentile ranking.
As a primer for the new safety program, I believe, the recent Transport Topics special report on CSA should be required reading by relevant personnel with every carrier and every independent business that leases equipment with driver service to carriers.
TT’s special report is thorough and understandable. The authors of the individual papers contained in the collection are to be commended for the education imported. To access a PDA file of the special report, use this Web address: www.ttnews.com/csa2010
In the special report, an article titled “Holding Drivers Accountable” sagely informs the reader how the CSA program will affect individual drivers. For example, under CSA, every roadside safety violation will count, going on a driver’s record and resulting in a fine for unsafe behavior during carrier investigation.
The operator’s “score,” which will be available to the carrier, may affect decisions relative to whether operators working under a business operating agreement — that is, “owner-operators” — and driver employees are considered acceptable to continue as operators for the company.
The CSA program also will have a bearing on the issue of whether applicants for driving jobs meet safety qualifications.
Another article in the special report — “Prepping Ahead of the Curve” — lists seven simple points for drivers and operators working under a business operating agreement to address in preparing for CSA. They are:
• Know and follow safety rules and regulations.
• Become familiar with how FMCSA will assess safety under CSA.
• Become knowledgeable about the new Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories — or BASICs, acronymically speaking.
• Keep copies of all your inspection reports because every inspection affects your company’s score.
• Take special care to avoid violations that fall under the “unsafe driving” and “fatigued driving” BASICs. These are heavily weighted and will flag your carrier for intervention more quickly than other types of violations.
• Understand that no news is good news: While enforcement officials won’t be praising safe drivers with all their paperwork in order, an inspection that finds nothing wrong with the equipment or the driver is essentially a good one.
• Check out the commercial motor vehicle safe-driving tips at: www.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/outreach/education/driverTips/index.htm.
Carriers should be complying with some of these seven points already under the safety rules and regulations created to ensure that the operator of a vehicle observes driver regulations: 49 C.F.R. §390.11.
I don’t think a carrier would have problems from an employment classification standpoint if it were to give a copy of TT’s special report — or a similar document if any exists — to an independent driver, advising him or her that the carrier won’t accept as “qualified” operators anyone whose records indicate safety problems and behavior that, besides jeopardizing public safety, would adversely affect the carrier’s CSA “score,” blemishing its safety record and business reputation.
The carrier also should be able to keep independent drivers informed of “scoreboard” information and discuss problems relative to what’s happening under their business operating agreement.
I feel that CSA involves no substantive changes in our laws and, as noted in the TT special report article titled “Reassessing Safety Performance,” that the program merely involves a new technique for “quantifying on-the-road safety.”
Furthermore, despite what some are saying about CSA, no extensive training appears to be required. Carrier personnel and independent drivers need not worry about CSA as long as they go to the trouble of studying it and understanding how its objectives and provisions will affect them in current or future positions.
The author, whose law practice is in Little Canada, Minn., has received lifetime achievement awards from the Truckload Carriers Association, Minnesota Trucking Association and Transportation Lawyers Association.
