National Transportation Consultants

October, 2012

Dear Viewer,

Which U.S. city has the highest crash risk? You might be surprised. Learn why a driver had to give up his CDL — permanently. CSA is still in the news. There are hearings in Washington and a defense from Administrator Ferro.

Sincerely,

Joe Morrison

Worst City to Drive In?

What city in the U.S. has the highest accident frequency? Right away New York City and Los Angeles come to mind with Chicago not far behind. According to Allstate, those cities don’t make the top 10. Allstate recently released their annual accident statistics and ranked the 200 largest cities based on accident frequency. Nationally, the average motorist will experience and accident every 10 years. For 2012 the top ten worst cities and the number of years between accidents were:

1. Washington, DC – 4.7
2. Baltimore, MD – 5.3
3. Providence, RI – 5.5
4. Hialeah, FL – 5.6
5. Glendale, CA – 5.6
6. Philadelphia, PA – 6.1
7. Alexandria, VA – 6.2
8. Newark, NJ – 6.3
9. San Francisco, CA – 6.5

In case you’re wondering, New York City was #20, Los Angeles was #15 and Chicago came in at #45. Allstate did not have sufficient data for Massachusetts so they weren’t ranked. Who knows, maybe next year Boston can be right up there in the top 10.

Which cities had the best drivers? Here’s the top 10 along with the number of years between accidents:

Which cities had the best drivers? Here’s the top 10 along with the number of years between accidents:

1. Sioux Falls, SD – 13.8
2. Boise, ID – 13.8
3. Fort Collins, CO – 13.6
4. Madison, WI – 13.0
5. Lincoln, NE – 12.4
6. Huntsville, AL – 12.4
7. Chandler, AZ – 12.3
8. Reno, NV – 12.3
9. Knoxville, TN – 12.2
10. Springfield, MO – 12.1

Driver Surrenders CDL

In March 2011 trucker Richard Corser was driving on Route 31 near Mason, NH< when a large piece of ice came off the trailer roof and impacted the following car. The driver of the car was seriously injured after the three foot chunk of ice impacted the front of his vehicle and windshield causing him to lose control and crash into a telephone pole.

The truck driver was charged with violating New Hampshire’s law requiring that vehicles be cleared of ice and snow. Originally charged with a felony, Corser recently plead guilty to a Class A misdemeanor and permanently surrendered his CDL. Corser will serve community service or pay a fine. There was also a one year suspended jail sentence.

New Hampshire’s law requiring drivers to clear their vehicles was passed in 2002 after the death of Jessica Smith, who was killed in a chain reaction crash after a chunk of ice came off the roof of a trailer.

CSA Criticism in Washington

In July FMCSA staffers testified at a Small Business Committee hearing about the effects of the CSA on small businesses. Since FMCSA administrator Anne Ferro did not attend, the committee chairman, Sam Graves, who wrote to her summarizing the testimony and the committee’s questions. Not surprisingly the questions posed were similar to the questions the trucking industry has about the effectiveness and objectivity of the CSA program.

On September 13th there was a hearing before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit where industry representatives and administrator Ferro testified. The industry comments mirrored the question raised by the Small Business Committee and Ferro’s speech pretty much addressed those questions, but didn’t necessarily answer them.

One of the key principles of CSA is that it can predict a motor carrier’s likelihood of future crash involvement. In response to multiple studies that have found otherwise, Ferro stated that UMTRI (University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute) found SMS is a significant improvement over the prior SafeStat system and FMCSA effectiveness testing has demonstrated that motor carriers with high BASIC scores have future crash rates that are more than double the crash rates of all active carriers. With respect to the individual BASICs, both FMCSA and UMTRI analyses show particularly strong associations between high scores in the Unsafe Driving and Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service) BASICs and future crash rates.

When pressed to explain why accident accountability is not a part of the CSA, even though FMCSA had promised to study that subject when the program was implemented, she stated that “… the Agency is reviewing the uniformity and consistency of police accident reports; the process for making “final” crash determinations; the process for accepting public input; and the actual effect on SMS’s ability to better identify carriers that have a high crash risk. As part of this effort, the Agency released the results of a prior report that analyzed the coding accuracy and consistency of Police Accident Reports for consideration as a potential source of information for determining a motor carrier’s role in crashes. While this study provided useful information, it did not address key questions that will be examined as part of our study, including whether or not the carrier’s role in the crash is a better indicator of future crash risk …”

Ferro went on to talk about proposing a new Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) to replace the current labor-intensive Compliance Review (CR) investigation. The new SFD process would use all available data in the system so that adverse vehicle and driver performance-based data alone are sufficient to result in an overall unsatisfactory rating for the carrier. That would be quite a change. High BASIC scores alone could result in a safety rating change.

December CSA Changes

Here are the CSA changes that will go into effect in December. FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro stated that the changes will allow the agency to sharpen its focus on which motor carriers and bus operators are most in need of agency intervention.

• Cargo related violations will be recorded in the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC Fatigued Driving BASIC will become the Hours-of-Service Compliance BASIC.
• FMCSA will remove 1-mph-to-5-mph speeding violations to ensure citations are consistent with current speedometer regulations.
• The Cargo-Related BASIC will be renamed the Hazardous Materials Compliance BASIC, but only motor carriers and law enforcement officials will have access to carrier safety scores in that category for the first 12 months.

“Our preliminary data shows that fatalities involving commercial vehicles dropped 4.7% last year compared to 2010,” Ferro said. “Still, on average, nearly 4,000 people die in large truck and bus crashes each year. That is why we are implementing these important changes to make CSA even more effective.”

National Transportation Consultants, Inc.

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