FMCSA Disputes GAO Study, Alternative to Fuel Tax Increase, Tickets for Snow Removal Failure

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released an updated study which looks at how CSA is perceived and understood by those in the trucking industry and enforcement community. The number of drivers who are extremely concerned about the program’s effects has dropped. In fact, 28.3% of the drivers reported having rejected loads or equipment in order to avoid potential violations which would appear on their records. The majority said they haven’t seen any improvement in driver quality.

On the enforcement side ATRI published some interesting statistics regarding the lighting violation to speeding violation ratio. Differing enforcement objectives can impact a carrier’s CSA score based on where they operate. In fact a fair number of enforcement officers were unaware that a clean inspection can improve a carrier’s BASIC score. Some even said that if a truck had no violations they didn’t complete the inspection paperwork.

FMCSA’s report examined how effective the program is at predicting future crash involvement. This was one of the cornerstones of CSA from the beginning and the most controversial aspect of the program. As you might expect, FMCSA found a strong correlation between high BASIC scores and crash statistics. They maintain that carriers with one or more BASICs at the intervention level have a 79% higher crash rate as a group when compared to carriers not over the intervention level.

Finally, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) weighed in with a lengthy report examining the effectiveness of CSA at assessing safety risk. The study found that 593 of 750 regulations were violated by less than 1% of the carriers. Of the remaining violations, only 13 showed some association with crash risk. Finally, only two violations had sufficient data to “establish a substantial and statistically reliable relationship with crash risk.”

The study also found that CSA “is successful at identifying a group of high risk carriers that have a higher group crash rate than the average crash rate of all carriers that we evaluated. However, further analysis shows that a majority of these high risk carriers did not crash at all, meaning that a minority of carriers in this group were responsible for all the crashes.”

FMCSA characterizes the differing conclusions as a “philosophical disagreement”. They’re convinced that high BASIC scores definitely have a direct correlation to increased crash risk. If they stay on track they’ll issue a proposed rule later this year that will outline how they intend to use CSA data to formulate carrier safety ratings.

This will be a major change since an on–site visit will no longer be required. Carrier ratings will be generated from CSA records and updated regularly. Any carrier with CSA information will then have a safety rating even if the data comes from only a few inspections. This is especially problematic for small carriers because a few bad inspections could skew the results.

Two important deadlines are approaching. The highway trust fund is expected to become insolvent by August and the current transportation funding law expires in September. The next transportation funding law should contain a mechanism to increase the money available for transportation infrastructure improvements.

Most people in Washington (Democrats and Republicans) agree that increasing the traditional funding source, fuel taxes, won’t happen. Some of the more likely alternatives are:

The last possibility is that Congress will put together a short term stop gap bill that will keep funding flowing but doesn’t address long term solutions. We should know in a few months.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman has once again spoken critically about the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Hersman expressed her concern that the post inspection out–of–service rate has shown little change. Last year’s RoadCheck rate was 20.6% which was only down .3% from the year before.

Hersman feels that both motor carrier management and government officials have failed to address this problem. Although the NTSB has no authority to regulate or act on their recommendations they do carry influence with congress and regulators.

Connecticut’s law requiring the removal of snow from vehicles became effective January 1. Since then 230 tickets have been issued with a fine of $120. If snow or ice falls off a commercial vehicle and strikes another vehicle or causes a crash the fine increases to $500.

The issue of snow removal, especially from trailer roofs, will certainly increase with time. Both New Jersey and Pennsylvania have similar laws although there are currently no reports about enforcement actions.