
Since December 2010, motor carriers have been subjected to a Safety Measurement System that has taken on new names and been updated from time to time. Problem is, the end result has changed very little.
That remains true with the latest unveiling of proposed updates to the CSA Safety Measurement System by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Wednesday, Nov. 20.
The agency is looking to change nine different approaches to the CSA/SMS methodology. Those changes include things like reorganizing the Vehicle Maintenance and Unsafe Driving BASICs, now called compliance categories, to focus on motor carriers with higher crash rates. Another change is grouping the 2,000 roadside violation codes into 100 categories.
Both of those changes are ones that the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association supported during the comment period ramping up to this announcement.
However, even with the remaining seven changes, the agency’s most recent attempt to tweak the Safety Measurement System program falls short of any meaningful reform.
“The agency’s modifications fall short of the comprehensive overhauls needed to accurately identify at-risk carriers and reduce truck crashes,” said Jay Grimes, OOIDA director of federal affairs.
“These programs will not achieve these objectives until they incentivize actual safety performance instead of compliance. The majority of data that FMCSA collects and analyzes has no connection to crashes. As such, further relying on this data is a misguided approach that will not fix the inherent problems within CSA/SMS.”
Problems with SMS since the beginning
In 2006, FMCSA’s then-administrator unveiled the CSA 2010 concept. The name was shorthand for Compliance Safety and Accountability with a 2010 launch date tacked on.
The CSA name has changed, but the core premise of the program remains.
With the laudable goal of reducing truck-involved crashes, the “data-driven” program was going to predict motor carriers most likely to operate in unsafe manners. No one really pushed back on the overarching concept. It did, and still does, make some sense.
Throughout the buildup to the anticipated 2010 roll out, stakeholders including OOIDA were highly critical of the data, methodology and overall attitudes regarding enforcement practices. Launched in December 2010, just before the new year, the program met instant backlash – backlash that continues to this day.
OOIDA reiterated just how flawed the system is in comments filed regarding the latest round of changes.
“In reality, no theory, mathematical equation, or model can overcome poor data quality. CSA/SMS is a prime example of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ (GIGO), which refers to the fact that the quality of output is determined by the quality of input,” OOIDA’s comments stated. “Moving forward, we believe a major overhaul of CSA/SMS is still required.”
Next steps
The Federal Register notice outlining the changes did not set a compliance deadline for the changes to go into effect. The agency did note it would have webinars and another notice in the Federal Register announcing the launch date. LL
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