The Compliance Safety Accountability enforcement program or CSA has been in the news quite a bit within the last few weeks. Looks like the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is finally working on making the system more accurate and fairer.
Changes to CSA
English: Logo of the United States Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The first bit of news was released on August 24, 2012 when the FMSCA announced that proposed changes to CSA were going to go live in December. Carriers have already had a four month preview of how these changes were going to affect their scores which was designed to enable the FMSCA to more accurately and quickly determine truck and bus operators who were more at risk in regards to compliance.
CSA changes include:
- Changing the Cargo-Related BASIC (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category) to the Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance BASIC to better identify HM safety and compliance problems. The agency’s analysis shows that this change will identify more carriers with HM concerns (33.8 percent versus 29.1 percent). Carriers and law enforcement can view this new BASIC in December. FMCSA will conduct further monitoring before it is made public.
- Changing the Fatigued Driving BASIC to the more specific Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance BASIC to more accurately reflect violations in this area; and weighting HOS paper and electronic logbook violations equally.
- Clarifying definition of passenger carrier companies by:
- Adding carriers that operate for-hire 9-15 passenger vehicles and 16-plus passenger vehicles;
- Removing carriers operating only 1-8 passenger vehicles and private carriers operating 1-15 passenger vehicles such as limousines, vans and taxis.
- Strengthening the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC by including cargo/load securement violations from today’s Cargo-Related BASIC.
- Including intermodal equipment violations that should be found during drivers’ pretrip inspections.
- Removing 1 to 5 mph speeding violations to ensure citations are consistent with current speedometer regulations. This change will be retroactive to January 2011.
- Modifying the Safety Management System (SMS) to more accurately display crash information that is available to the public. The agency will begin using more descriptive terms for the data it has collected on motor carrier violations for each BASIC. For instance, the website will no longer use the term like “inconclusive,” but rather, “less than 5 violations,” or “zero violations,” etc.
The Crash BASIC will continue to stay visible to motor carriers and law enforcement only.
The FMCSA also will ensure all recorded violations accurately reflect the inspection type; only driver violations will be recorded under driver inspections.
ATA expresses significant concerns with CSA
Scott Mugno, vice president of safety for FedEx Ground Package System representing the American Trucking Associations testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, yesterday stating ““ATA has been supportive of the objective of CSA – to reduce commercial motor vehicle crashes, injuries and fatalities – since the program’s inception, however, ATA has significant concerns with the program in its current form.”
American Trucking Associations (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mungno cited various issues with CSA scores and data that prevent the FMCSA from evaluating carriers properly. For example the methodology that counts all crashes against a carrier regardless of prevent-ability. Without a doubt for many carriers who were victims of the wrong place at the wrong time accidents, having negative CSA scores just seems inherently wrong. It is also growing concern as more and more operators complain they are losing business because of CSA scores, whether the scores are justified or not.
With so much on the line improving the system would be prudent and should be of primary concern for the FMCSA. The ATA called on the FMCSA to establish a plan to develop and implement positive changes to the system. Certainly CSA will be facing many more adjusts in the next while.
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