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Jun 1, 2010 12:00 PM, By Rick Weber

FMCSA addressing concerns over crash data, power units, and method of weighing violations

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William Quade, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) associate administrator for program delivery and enforcement, said the agency delayed the national launch date for Comprehensive Safety Analysis (CSA) 2010 to address some concerns expressed by the industry.

FMCSA has pushed back the start date of CSA 2010 to November, a full five months past its original June kick-off date. Enforcement still should begin in 2011.

“Through the process of doing the test and trying to actively engage the industry, we were hearing a lot of concerns,” he said during the National Tank Truck Carries annual Tank Truck Safety & Security Council Seminar April 6-8 in Nashville, Tennessee. “We think they have legitimacy and we need to take time to address them before we roll out the system.”

The concerns:

• Crash data reported to FMCSA by state partners — and linked to motor carrier records — does not identify whether the motor carrier was accountable for the crash, and the Carrier Safety Measurement System (CSMS) methodology uses the recordable crash data to identify motor carriers for intervention without an accountable determination.

  In a letter to the American Trucking Associations (ATA) eight days after the NTTC seminar, FMCSA administrator Anne Ferro said that while the agency works to address the issue, it will exclude the crash assessment of the CSA 2010 CSMS from any public Web Sites that may be viewed by shippers or insurers and will continue to consider accountability of crashes before issuing any formal and final adverse safety fitness ratings that follow compliance reviews. FMCSA also is evaluating the feasibility of having staff assess state-reported crashes for accountability before they are considered by the CSA 2010 CSMS methodology. Initial results of a feasibility study indicate “that the use of police accident reports (PARs) is a viable option for determining large truck and bus crash accountability.”

• The CSA 2010 CSMS currently uses a motor carrier's number of power units rather than vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as a measure of exposure. Ferro said FMCSA acknowledges that the use of power units as the sole measure of exposure “can potentially create a disadvantage for segments of the motor carrier industry that employ greater asset utilization,” and the agency will make the vehicle mileage field of the MCS-150 a mandatory field for updates. As part of the recently released CSA 2010 Data Review Web site, FMCSA is encouraging motor carriers to provide their annualized data.

• Violations are not weighed equitably.

“Right now, a tire violation is a tire violation is a tire violation,” Quade said. “It's been pointed out to us that a tire violation on a steering axle is a lot more significant than a tire violation on a trailer.”

Warning letters

Beginning in July, SafeStat will be replaced with SMS (CSA 2010), a warning letter PDF sample will be sent to all motor carriers nationwide, FMCSA will begin inspecting carriers with deficient BASICs from collected data and finalize the intervention process.

Motor carriers that exceed the intervention threshold in any of seven BASICs (Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories) segments will receive a CSA 2010 warning letter. Warning letters are automatically generated on a monthly basis, and the Comprehensive Safety Information System (CSI) system tracks whether or not carriers check their results. In Phase I of the test states, 50% of carriers receiving warning letters checked their results in CSI.

Roadside inspectors in all states using Inspection Selection System (ISS)/Query Central will be able to see which carriers exceed BASIC thresholds. CSMS and BASICs values will replace SafeStat and SEA values in roadside inspection systems such as ISS, Query Central and State CVIEWs (Commercial Vehicle Information Exchange Window). Carriers whose BASIC scores exceed the threshold will be “Targeted Roadside Inspect” (red light) in ISS.

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