GAO report calls out FMCSA on lack of improvements for CSA

While the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has made strides in regards to better oversight of motor carriers through its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) and chameleon vetting safety programs, there is room for improvement for it to improve its oversight to better target high-risk carriers.

That was the thesis of a report released this week by the United States General Accountability Office (GAO).

CSA was designed to weed out as many as 5 percent—or 150,000—of the nation’s 3 million or so long-haul truck drivers that the feds believe are involved in a disproportionately high number of truck accidents and fatalities. CSA uses a complex scoring system to rate the nation’s nearly 700,000 DOT-registered interstate trucking entities on seven “Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories,” known as “BASICs.” The seven BASICs are driving, fatigued driving, driver fitness, alcohol and drugs, vehicle maintenance, cargo security (now HM Compliance) and crash history. Carriers are given “scores” in each category—higher the score, worse the performance. So-called “warning letters” go out to fleets with scores above 65 (which means that only 35 percent of carriers in their class have worse scores). For hazmat carriers, the cutoff score is 60.

In the report, GAO noted how CSA’s SMS (Safety Measurement System) leverages carrier performance data that is collected by inspectors and investigations to calculate safety scores for carriers and then identify those at high risk of causing a crash at which point the scores are used to target high risk carriers for enforcement whether it is in the form of a warning letter, additional investigation or a fine.

And in added that in a 2014 report GAO cited two challenges that it said limit the precision of SMS scores:
1-SMS uses violations of safety-related regulations to calculate a score but GAO said most of these regulations were violated too infrequently to determine whether they were accurate predictors of crash risk; and
2-Most carriers lacked sufficient data from inspections and violations to ensure that a carrier’s SMS score could be reliably compared with scores for other carriers

GAO said these challenges “raise questions about whether FMCSA is able to identify and target the carriers at highest risk for crashing in the future and
recommended that FMCSA revise the SMS methodology to better account for limitations in available information when drawing comparisons of safety performance across carriers.

And it added that the FMCSA did not concur with GAO’s recommendation to revise the SMS methodology because it believed that SMS sufficiently prioritized carriers for intervention. Therefore, FMCSA has not taken any actions. GAO said it “continues to believe that a data-driven, risk-based approach holds promise and efforts to improve FMCSA’s oversight could allow it to more effectively target its resources toward the highest risk carriers, and better meet its mission of reducing the overall crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving motor carriers.”

The American Trucking Associations fully endorsed the GAO report, calling on FMCSA to make changes to CSA. And at a hearing before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, committee Chairman Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) said FMCSA has disregarded the views of Congress, stakeholders and independent agencies with “its data-driven approach to regulating our nation’s truckers.”

ATA President and CEO Bill Graves shared a similar view.

“Yesterday, the flaws in CSA were again highlighted and again the agency insisted it will do nothing to correct them,” Graves said. “FMCSA should not just hear the concerns expressed by Senator Fischer and the GAO, but address them with real action.”

But perhaps the strongest words for FMCSA’s inactivity came from Jeff Tucker, CEO & Founder at QualifiedCarriers.com & CEO Tucker Company Worldwide Inc.

“GAO’s continued critique of CSA reassures well meaning industry participants that there are limitations on how a government agency can twist data and causality to fit its flawed policy initiatives,” he said.  “GAO hits the mark regarding chameleon carriers. They’re a truly dangerous scourge we must rid from the market. I also agree with GAO that CSA seems to be a better tool than SafeStat for internal prioritization purposes, and agree that the SMS doesn’t accurately predict crash risk. GAO continues to validate CSA’s serious limitations. For commercial selection purposes, CSA has been, and remains useless. Expect that reality to continue for years to come.”

In December 2012, FMCSA rolled out multiple CSA SMS changes that it said were based in part on public comments received from a preview of proposed changed to its SMS Web site, and they noted at the time that in the first year of CSA enforcement violations per roadside inspection and driver violations per inspection decreased by their largest amounts in ten years at 8 percent and ten percent, respectively, coupled with 30 million visits to the SMS site. And they added that these changes, which were developed over several months with feedback from public and private industry stakeholders, would enhance FMCSA’s ability to identify and take action against trucks and buses with safety and compliance concerns.

The SMS changes that took effect in December 2012 include:
-strengthening the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories) by incorporating cargo/load securement violations from today’s Cargo-Related BASIC;
-changing the Cargo-related BASIC to the HM (hazardous materials) Compliance BASIC to better identify HM-related safety and compliance problems;
-better aligning the SMS with Intermodal Equipment Provider regulations; and
-more accurately identifying carriers that transport significant quantities of HM, among others

Even well before theses changes took effect, industry reaction to CSA has been frosty at best. In many trucking circles, the general consensus is that CSA is an ill-conceived plan that is doing nothing more than making it difficult to get things done in an already-challenging environment.

The American Trucking Associations has said that CSA scores are unreliable, have a loose and sometimes inverse connection to crash risk, coupled with the fact that they say the FMCSA is demonstrating an unwillingness to discuss CSA’s flaws.

“My prescription for FMCSA to regain its credibility and improve highway safety: remove from view any and all BASIC scores today; substitute ‘law enforcement community’ everywhere you used the word, ‘public’ or ‘stakeholders’ in referencing CSA verbally or in documents; focus your resources exclusively on improving your data sets and methodologies; and finally, show some backbone to the glut of ‘safety advocates’ both internal and external, who have led you astray,” said Tucker.