Redesign of CSA Website to Clarify Carrier Scores

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

ORLANDO, Fla. — Federal officials said they are working a new design for the public website of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program to make it clearer what carriers’ scores mean and are still reviewing the best way to incorporate crash accountability into the safety program.

Courtney Stevenson, a specialist with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said a preview of the changes to the Safety Measurement System website will be available in early November.

“What we’re focusing on now is how the existing SMS information is displayed to the public,” Stevenson said at a standing-room-only educational session Oct. 21 at American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition. “While we get a lot of comments on the [CSA] methodology, the theme in every comment is that this is out there in the public eye, and people want to make sure that the users of the information are well-informed on what SMS is and what it isn’t.”

FMCSA wants to make it clearer that SMS scores are on a percentile system, which ranks companies’ based on regulatory violations and compliance reviews relative to similar carriers, Stevenson said.

“That’s something that people who are familiar with SMS understand,” she said. “But it’s not necessarily something that all of our users understand.”

At the same session, FMCSA Associate Administrator Bill Quade confirmed that the agency’s research about a system to incorporate crash accountability, a piece the industry has long demanded, is still under review.

Trucking companies currently receive the same penalties in CSA for all crashes, whether or not their drivers were at fault. A crash accountability system would assign different penalties based on fault.

The research looks into whether police reports from crashes can be used to determine responsibility, Quade said.

“If we did that, would this crash rating process give us a much better result than we have currently?” he asked, adding that it could cost $3 million to $10 million a year. “If we want to spend that much money every year, what are we going to get?”

The crash accountability research will be released to the public this year, Quade said.

Now in its third year, the CSA concept is supported by the trucking industry, but concerns remain about some scoring functions and whether shippers and the public understand the system.

“While the program has certainly morphed itself into something larger than was originally envisioned by the Bush administration, when fine-tuned and appropriately administered, it will reshape the safety culture of the trucking industry,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a speech at MC&E.

CSA ranks as the No. 2 concern on this year’s American Transportation Research Institute survey of critical trucking issues released during the conference.

Rob Abbott, ATA’s vice president for safety policy, questioned whether CSA’s data are reliable.

“ATA’s view is that until peer review research confirms a strong relationship between scores and crash risk, they should be withheld from public view,” Abbott said. Only some categories show a strong relationship, while some show no relationship or an inverse one.

But he also had some praise for FMCSA.

“We have to acknowledge that the agency has been responsive to calls for improvements to the program. Perhaps not all, and sometimes, we might get frustrated with those,” he said.

Quade defended CSA against what he said were unfounded criticisms that the program is a “beta test” the agency released before it was ready.

“When we rolled CSA out in 2010, we were absolutely confident that it was going to do what we needed it to do,” he said.

Another piece of FMCSA’s upcoming changes will allow users to see all of the other carriers that one company is being compared with, Stevenson said.

“What would be provided is a list of DOT numbers in your safety event group and their measures,” she said.

FMCSA also will implement a system to remove some violations from carriers’ and drivers’ records if a court found them not guilty, a change Abbott welcomed.

“Carriers and drivers have always felt that it is fundamentally wrong to assign consequences for violations that have been dismissed in court,” he said.

The first major changes to CSA were launched last year after an eight-month preview period for carriers. In addition to tweaking the scoring system, FMCSA created a new Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category for hazardous materials regulatory violations and eliminated the cargo securement BASIC, moving its violations into the vehicle maintenance category.