Make changes in CSA scoring methodology, truckers ask FMCSA

Trucking interests are asking the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to make important changes to its CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) carrier rating system following criticisms from a key U.S senator and the Government Accountability Office.
 
To complicate matters even further at FMCSA, the man who has been action administrator since Anne Ferro resigned last August said he is also leaving the agency. T.F. “Scott” Darling said his last day would be March 23. No immediate successor was named by press time.
  
In a March 4 hearing before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security, the GAO criticized FMCSA for ignoring its criticisms about the quality and quantity of data used to generate CSA scores.
  
It called on FMCSA revise the methods used in grading trucking companies. Trucking officials have long complained that the methodology used to create the CSA is skewed because of faulty information used to make comparisons of safety performances by carriers.
  
“FMCSA’s method does not effectively identify high risk carriers,” the government’s watchdog agency concluded.
  
During the hearing, FMCSA came under fire by Senate Subcommittee Chairman Deb Fischer, R-Neb., for disregarding “the views of Congress, stakeholders and several independent agencies with its current agenda-driven approach to regulating our nation’s truckers.”
  
The five-year-old CSA program has been under heavy criticism by trucking industry officials for being unfair. Two of the seven “BASIC” scores used to rate trucking companies have been taken off FMCSA’s web site because they were viewed as flawed.
  
“The flaws in CSA were again highlighted and again the agency insisted it will do nothing to correct them,” American Trucking Associations President and CEO Bill Graves said in a statement. “FMCSA should not just hear the concerns expressed by Senator Fischer and the GAO, but address them with real action.”
  
ATA has asked FMCSA to change how it uses crash history in CSA scoring. It would like all CSA scores taken down from the FMCSA web site until the system is fixed.
 
For his part, Darling told the panel that changes would be coming to the scoring methodology sometime this spring.
 
“These changes will strengthen our ability to identify companies for investigation before they are involved in a crash,” Darling said, adding the changes would be publish in the Federal Register with a comment period for the public.
 
Darling insisted that the Safety Measurement System (SMS) that is used to rate carriers in the CSA system is continually being tweaked for improvements.
 
“FMCSA continues to improve SMS to identify those motor carriers that pose the greatest risk to safety,” Darling said. “Our responsiveness to industry, safety advocates, oversight agencies and Congress continually prompts new and revised policies, reports, and changes to SMS.”
  
That answer did not appear to satisfy senators on either side of the aisle.
 
Sen. Fischer asked for FMCSA to provide greater transparency in the process and for the agency to conduct more cost-benefit analysis with any proposed regulation.

The legislation, Fischer said, would aim to improve the agency’s guidance review to provide the public greater transparency of the process and ensure the agency conducts more cost-benefit analyses and real-world studies of proposed regulations.
  
Meanwhile, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said he plans to restore a recently suspended HOS rule under review by the FMCSA. Last year, Booker and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., strongly objected to the suspending the rule, finding support from key stakeholders. Trucking interests won a suspension of the 34-hour restart last December, pending a comprehensive study on HOS and fatigue under way at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
 
The rule that drivers take off two consecutive periods of 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. during a 34-hour restart was suspended through Sept. 30. Truckers still are required to adhere to pre-July 2013 hours-of-service regulations.
 
Finally, the FMCSA says in a supplemental report that it expects publication date of its final electronic logging device rule by Sept. 30, moving it up from Nov. 9. The rule will be effective two years after its publication date.