FMCSA's Compliance, Safety, Accountability program a gateway to safer motor carriers, safer roadways

Last month, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, better known as CSA. This program gives us a clearer safety picture of commercial carriers and allows FMCSA and carriers to take action before safety problems occur.

If you're not a trucking insider, the first thing you should know is that CSA improves our ability to identify unsafe commercial truck and bus companies. The new system also allows us to identify safety risks earlier. And, once we've identified a carrier with risk patterns, we can work with the carrier to reduce those risks and improve road safety for everyone.

At the heart of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program is the Safety Measurement System (SMS), which collects safety data from inspections and crash reports then weighs the severity of violations within seven different categories. These seven categories cover a range of important safety factors: unsafe driving, fatigued driving, driver fitness, controlled substances/alcohol, vehicle maintenance, cargo, and crash involvement.

Together, these calculations give us a pretty good safety profile of our nation's motor carriers. And the more we learn, the faster and more effectively we can act to make our roads safer.

The aspect of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program that gives me greatest confidence is its transparency. The data and calculations used by the Safety Measurement System are public. So if there are problems or errors, carriers and drivers can request a review.

Plus, carriers know their safety profiles are available for all to see. Because consumers and logistics managers can view the SMS, carriers have a powerful market incentive to comply with safety rules.

Before the Department of Transportation launched CSA, we ran pilot programs in nine different states. We made data available for carriers months in advance. We received feedback from industry members, law enforcement agencies, and safety experts.

And we used that feedback to make CSA even better. As FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said, "We worked closely with our partners in the motor vehicle community to develop this powerful new program."

For the protection of commercial drivers, their cargo, and everyone on our nation's roadways, we are trying to keep carriers in the business of operating safely. CSA gives us a terrific new tool to do just that.

Comments

[Steve Engelman]

The false premise of this is that it assumes commercial vehicle operators are to blame for the majority of unsafe highway behavior that causes wrecks.

The FMCSA's 2006 "Large Truck Crash Causation Study" indicates that where fault can be determined in car-truck crashes, car drivers were generally to blame over 50% of the time, and other studies have indicated that car drivers were generally to blame up to 75% of the time.

This is not to say that more cannot be done to increase highway safety by targeting commercial vehicle drivers and operators with more regulation. However, to do so without also aiming increased and equally strict regulation and enforcement at drivers of non-commercial cars and trucks is to deny the study results that indicate non-commercial drivers of cars and trucks are as much of, if not a greater threat to highway safety than commercial trucks.

As of late I have seen far more emphasis on commercial vehicle safety than on non-commercial vehicle safety, which is blatantly hypocritical, and indicative of the practice of imposing regulations primarily out of political correctness rather than highway safety.

In other words, "Business as Usual".

[Scott Tisthammer]

If the FMCSA doens't know how many active motor carriers there are, 490,000 or 745,000, conditional and unsatisfactory ratings are as FMCSA suggest, maybe the problem is truck drivers and companies alone.

I would as the boss, a US taxpayer, suggest the FMCSA deserves the same rating as US government, unsatisfactory!

Sometimes the truth is hard to accept, ask any truck driver who has been put out of business, bankrupt linke 1.5 million Americans in 2009, while the agency and government that is in charge fail to the tune of trillions.

OOIDA:
3065 motor carriers with at least five trucks went bankrupt in 2008, oil, & fuel costs were a large factor.

MCClatchy News, 5-23-10: Food fight pits big, small producers, between 2002 & 2007 40,000 midsized farms disappeared.

www.abiworld.com:
1,473,675 US bankruptcy filings in 2009, up from 1,117,771 in 2008, 60,837 were business filings, up from 43,546 in 2008, percentage another double digit increase.

http://www.justice.org/resources/Truck_Report_Final_082109.pdf

In an original analysis of data not previously available to the public, the American Association for Justice found commuters are sharing roads with trucks that have incurred thousands of safety violations, such as defective brakes, bald tires, loads that dangerously exceeded weight limits, and drivers with little or no training or drug and alcohol dependence.

Researchers at the American Association for Justice examined over a million lines of data on
the entire U.S. trucking industry obtained from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

The results are shocking. As of April 2009, there were more than 28,000 trucking companies, representing more than 200,000 trucks, operating on U.S. roads with safety violations. And there is every reason to believe this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The following is en email I received from the FMCSA CS2010

Seems to be a small error, CSA2010 page suggests 700,000 MC#s they have to audit.

http://csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/csa_why.aspx
Limitations of the Current operational Model.

The following an email I received from CSA2010

Mr. Tisthammer,

Thank you for taking the time to submit your question on CSA 2010 and active carriers. Approximately 745,000 carriers are officially active in the census as of the June MCMIS snapshot. Of these carriers, approximately 490,000 have demonstrated some form of activity within the last two years. This activity includes inspections, MCS-150 forms, crashes, etc. Some of these carriers may not longer be in business, and some of the ones without known activity may still be active. Depending on your purpose, this may provide the estimate you are looking for.

I recommend you keep up with the latest information on CSA 2010 as it becomes available by signing up for the email subscription service or RSS feed. You can do this on the CSA 2010 website http://csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov/Stay_Connected.aspx. I hope this answers your question, feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.

Name left out so this hard working honest employee woudldn't be fired.

CSA 2010 Team

The numbers are all over the map,745,000 down to 490,000. The FMCSA has to do better because our lives depend on it!

Go back to Supply Chain Brain & Robert Voltman telling us he has told the DOT they have issued 20 to 30 MC#s to the same address?

You can go to each state and find the failure: http://www.justice.org/violationsdatabase/

Then go to http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/roads

Then go to http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

It's Your State
What's the state of your State's infrastructure? Find out now

Then go to http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php

You will find the answer to all our problems as a nation.

You can't expect the people to believe you if all you allow is one side of the story and never the truth.

[mary jo wozniak]

Until the trucking industry has laws which are made from knowledgeable individuals who have actually driven trucks for a living, it will continue to be a horse and pony show!! The current laws are based on what looks good to uninformed and ignorant individuals. If you are truly concerned about safety here are some simple steps: 1. rules written and made by the professional driver 2. do away with the 60/70 hour rule...... These two changes in themselves would eliminate stress and ignorance in our profession. I am pretty sure this won't happen as it would eliminate a number of overpaid and unnecessary work positions.

[Dallis E. Hughes]

I commend the FMCSA for working on the rules and implementing the CSA program. I am pleased more and more carriers are going to the electronic logs which I believe will make drivers and carriers more compliant. I believe it is time to put stronger language in 395.15 concerning these on board recording devices. At this time, Carriers can extend the 60/70 hour rules by changing on duty not driving times to off duty. There should be no way a company or carrier could change electronic logs to extend a drivers 8 day or 7 day period. Simplicity is always the key to successful rule writing. Carriers, Drivers, and law enforcement personnel should all easily understand any changes to the rules before a final decision to the rules is made.

[Terry Pickens]

I have a problem with CSA reporting crash data on the driver when the truck driver is not a fault. This is in no
way fair to the truck driver. They should include on the report that the driver was not at fault or if the driver is at fault ! In 2009 I had a car run into the back of my trailer on an exit ramp when I stopped at the red light. The driver of the car was talking on the cell phone. He was given a ticket by the State Patrol. I was not at fault and there was nothing I could have done to prevent the accident.
I went online and looked my safety report and the report list I was involved in a crash. This makes my record look bad. VERY, VERY, UNFAIR ! I have written a letter to my Congressman !