MCMIS to Reflect Court Decisions; Safety: Cost or Culture?

Beginning in August states will be required to modify information in the MCMIS database (Motor Carrier Management Information System) to reflect any changes that result from the adjudication of a citation issues as the result of a roadside inspection. Currently states are not required to recognize a not-guilty verdict or a dismissal and may choose to leave the violation in the database.

This has been a hotly contested issue with drivers and motor carriers supporting the change. Their feeling is that the current system sets up a double jeopardy situation whereby the agency that issued the citation can choose to ignore the court’s ruling and let the violation stand. On the other hand, the parties opposed to this change feel that courts may choose to lower or dismiss charges for reasons not related to the merits of the case or that defendants will attempt to plea bargain to a violation with lower severity points to improve their SMS scores. Also, a citation may be dismissed if the issuing officer fails to appear.

For their part FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) has said that these scenarios may occur. However, there are checks and balances in place to prevent improper dismissal of commercial driver violations, including 49 CFR 384.226 that prohibits States from masking convictions, deferring imposition of judgment, or allowing an individual to enter into a diversion program that would prevent a commercial learner’s permit (CLP) or CDL holder’s conviction from appearing on the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS) driving record. Additionally, the Agency will continue to provide outreach to courts and prosecutors to explain the serious impacts of cases involving CMVs (Commercial Motor Vehicles) and commercial drivers and to improve their knowledge and understanding of CMV violations and their potential consequences.

This policy is effective for inspections dated on or after August 23, 2014. The DataQs system is used to request the change and the person filling out the request must provide documentation showing the result of the adjudication. The MCMIS record will be modified as follows:

The costs are plainly evident on a motor carrier’s financial statement Would the results positively improve if funding was increased? What would likely happen if budgets were cut?

Many safety directors have had to field these types of questions from upper management and the answers can be somewhat elusive. It’s easy to quantify the cost of a tire, but difficult to pin a number on safety. That’s probably because safety isn’t an item or a service that’s purchased but rather it’s the absence of bad things happening. Can you quantify that, should you even try?

The story of what’s happening at General Motors has been widely reported.. For many years GM fostered a corporate culture that rewarded cost cutting measures. To be fair there’s no evidence that anyone at GM purposely disregarded safety but the prevailing culture favored reducing costs.

This is not unlike the types of decisions that are made all the time in the low margin, highly competitive motor carrier industry where profits are gained by managing costs. Let’s say that a particular company decides to increase its safety spending ten fold. What effect would that have? At GM the result would have been the same – the safety programs would have existed separately from the cost management programs and product design would have been unchanged. Much the same would happen at a trucking company – safety initiatives and operating procedures exist in separate worlds and many times internal conflicts are left unresolved.

The best definition of safety is that it’s a culture rather than a slogan or program. GM has come to realize that and some motor carriers have discovered this as well. The culture of safety must be integrated at all levels of decision making and every participant must have a voice and the ability to affect the outcome. Even more importantly, all parties must be on the lookout for consequences that might affect safety, even if they are unintended.

This is not to say that training and information programs about safety and defensive driving aren’t important. However, they are only effective if the participants feel empowered to act on the information. Safety is a culture and as such the only true measure of effectiveness is the cost that arises when the corporate culture diverges from that path. Ask GM what the costs are.