FMCSA acting chief says CSA study is coming soon

In testimony before the United States Senate Commerce Committee on his nomination to become administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration yesterday, Scott Darling, acting administrator and chief counsel Scott Darling addressed next steps for CSA, also known as Compliance, Safety, and Accountability program.

The five-year old CSA program was designed to weed out as many as 5 percent—or 150,000—of the nation’s 3 million or so long-haul truck drivers that the feds believe are involved in a disproportionately high number of truck accidents and fatalities. CSA uses a complex scoring system to rate the nation’s nearly 700,000 DOT-registered interstate trucking entities on seven “Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories,” known as “BASICs.” The seven BASICs are driving, fatigued driving, driver fitness, alcohol and drugs, vehicle maintenance, cargo security (now HM Compliance) and crash history. Carriers are given “scores” in each category—higher the score, worse the performance. So-called “warning letters” go out to fleets with scores above 65 (which means that only 35 percent of carriers in their class have worse scores). For hazmat carriers, the cutoff score is 60.

When the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act was signed into law late last year, the FMCSA announced changes it made to the CSA program, as per the FAST Act that called for changes to improve transparency in the FMCSA’s oversight activity.

“As of December 4, 2015, pursuant to the FAST Act of 2015, much of the information previously available on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s website related to property carrier’s compliance and safety performance will no longer be displayed publicly,” FMCSA said in a December statement. “While the agency is not prohibited from displaying all of the data, no information will be available for property carriers while appropriate changes are made.”

This development stemmed from language in the FAST Act calling for a study of data accuracy and reliability, according a summary from the American Trucking Associations (ATA). The summary said FMCSA must commission a Transportation Research Board study of the accuracy of the CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS) in identifying high-risk carriers and predicting future crash risk and severity. The study must then by submitted by FMCSA to Congress within 18 months, along with a corrective action plan a corrective action plan would be required to address deficiencies identified in the study, which would then be followed by the Inspector General within four months determining if the plan properly addresses the study’s recommendations.

And, as per its announcement in December, “there will no information regarding carrier alerts or percentile ranks, or scores, made publicly available until FMCSA completes its corrective action plan…and determined by FMCSA to not have been the truck driver or motor carrier’s fault must also be removed. Finally, percentile ranks and alerts (rates and absolute measures) shall remain publicly available. Carriers will be able to access their respective data, including percentile ranks and alerts. Also, law enforcement officials will continue to be able to access scores and use them for enforcement prioritization,” according to a summary from the American Trucking Associations.

In his testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday, Darling said that this study is expected to kick off in February.

“Within hours of fast act being enacted we took down the CSA scores for alerts and percentiles right away and are now currently working with the National Academies of Science to make sure they can conduct a thorough study of our CSA program” Darling said.

Even though FMCSA appears to be committed to augmenting CSA, not everyone is sold on its efforts.

Longtime CSA critic Jeff Tucker, CEO & Founder at QualifiedCarriers.com & CEO Tucker Company Worldwide Inc., explained that CSA continues to be problematic in its methodology and implementation.

“The sorry saga of FMCSA’s CSA program has been a thorn in the side of real safety advocates interested in quality data, [including] academia, industry, shippers, carriers, the USDOT’s own Inspector General, and Congress’ Government Accountability Office (GAO), FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, and its CSA Subcommittee,” he said. “After five years of obstinate, foolishly irresponsible behavior by FMCSA, it quite literally took an act of Congress to force FMCSA to pull these scores down. Relative scores, alert symbols and anything not factual, are removed until such time that the ‘fixes’ are ready for public view. Don’t hold your breath.