The FMCSA's New Trucking Safety Enforcement Program

October 29, 2010 (Press-News.org) In an attempt to shore up its enforcement of federal trucking safety regulations, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) began rolling out a new program this year, the Comprehensive Safety Analysis, or CSA 2010.

The centerpiece of this program is a new electronic database that will allow FMCSA investigators to more efficiently and effectively pinpoint which commercial carriers and drivers are not complying with federal trucking safety government regulations.

Called the "safety measurement system" (SMS), the database uses information collected from roadside inspections, state crash data and the Federal Motor Carrier census to evaluate the safety performance of trucking companies and their drivers. The database uses seven measurements to judge safety performance, referred to as "BASIC". These measurements include:
- Unsafe driving: operation of a commercial vehicle in a dangerous, careless manner, which may include tickets for speeding, reckless driving
- Fatigued drivers: Hours of service violations, driving while tired, sick, fatigued
- Driver fitness: drivers unfit to operate a commercial vehicle because of lack of training, experience, medical qualifications, failure to have a valid driver's license
- Controlled substances/alcohol: drivers who have operated a commercial vehicle while under the influence of illegal drugs, prescription medications and/or alcohol
- Vehicle maintenance: failure to maintain trucks in proper working order
- Cargo-related: improperly loading a truck, failure to prevent shifting loads, overloading a truck, unsafe handling of hazardous materials
- Crash indicator: past history or pattern of crashes based in part on the frequency and severity of the crashes

Commercial carriers receive their scores for each BASIC category based on the number and severity of violations they receive for each one as well as when the violations happened. The new system gives more weight to violations that happened more recently.

Once a measurement is determined for each of the categories, every carrier is placed into a peer group with other carriers that have had roughly the same number of inspections.

Finally, individual carriers and drivers then are given one of three rankings for each category: continue to operate, marginal or unfit to operate.

Drivers or carriers that receive a "marginal" rating will be subject to an intervention by the FMCSA. The interventions are meant to be tailored specifically to the deficient performance and vary in severity. For example, a warning letter is the most basic type of intervention. Other types of interventions include targeted roadside inspections, off-site inspections, and targeted and comprehensive on-site investigations.

In cases where the carrier or driver does not remedy the deficiency or receives an "unfit to operate" rating, the FMCSA will suspend their operating licenses.

Most of the data collected in the SMS system eventually will be available to the public, possibly before the end of 2010. Drivers' names and other identifying information will be removed to protect privacy.

CSA 2010 to Improve Safety, Federal Oversight of Trucking Industry

The FMCSA believes the program will allow it to catch non-compliance issues much earlier on, giving it an opportunity to work with the carrier to correct the problem before an accident occurs.

Before CSA 2010, FMCSA investigators relied on physical, in-person examinations of commercial carrier businesses, which could take up to four days to complete. With more than 700,000 commercial carriers in the U.S., the FMCSA only had enough manpower to conduct on-site investigations in less than 2 percent of all commercial carrier operations.

Moreover, the old system did not individually track the safety performance of drivers. This oversight allowed drivers who were fired by one commercial carrier for violating safety regulations to move to another carrier. By tracking driver compliance, trucking companies now have a tool to use as part of the pre-employment screening process.

Key Concerns about the Program

While the trucking industry has gone on record in support of CSA 2010, it has raised some important questions about the program and how it will impact commercial carriers.

During testimony before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, the executive vice president of Transportation Corporation of America Keith Klein proposed three changes to CSA 2010:
- Only include crashes that are found to be the fault of the commercial carrier and/or driver (current data includes crashes regardless of who is at fault)
- Use the number of vehicle miles traveled rather than the number of trucks or power units to define an individual carrier's exposure
- Only include actual citations for safety violations (current data includes warnings, which can skew the results)

Klein argued that without making these changes, the data would not accurately reflect which carriers and drivers posed an actual safety risk.

Truck drivers have expressed concerns about how they will be evaluated by the new program. Specifically, some truck drivers have said they believe it is unfair that their performance will be rated on duties the commercial carriers are supposed to perform, such as maintaining the trucks.

Whether CSA 2010 will have the desired impact of improving the safety of U.S. roadways is yet to be seen. However, with 365,000 reported accidents involving semi-trucks, big rigs, and other large trucks in 2008, any improvements to the safety of the nation's roadways is welcome.

Article provided by Ashton & Price LLP
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