Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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journal leading news, trucking market conditions and industry analysis CSA subcommittee identifies 3 main issues with program Crash fault, public scores, data quality bother carriers most A Compliance Safety Accountability subcommittee last month concluded three prioritized issues to take to a full committee later this year: crash accountability, data quality issues and public display of carriers' Safety Measurement System scores. The CSA Subcommittee to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee ended its Feb. 5-6 meeting with the recommendations that will be put to the full committee for consideration in April. Issues taken up were determined by each member ranking his or her top three CSA problems. Various data quality problems ranked No. 3; the problematic nature of the public display of carrier SMS scores was No. 2; and how to address crash fault and/or preventability in the Crash Indicator Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) took the top spot. "Using all information that the agency has before it," draft recommendations read, "FMCSA should exclude crash data for which there is a clear determination of not-at-fault" or nonpreventability on the accident report or elsewhere "for purposes of computing a carrier's Crash Indicator BASIC score." Most committee members felt that in instances where fault was noted on crash reports that it should be considered in the scoring, while a minority suggested that FMCSA's higher standard of "preventable" or "nonpreventable" – determined during compliance reviews where crash issues are found that could impact a company's safety rating – was a better mark. As for public display of carriers' SMS scores, a majority of committee members urged the agency to withhold percentile rankings in the BASICs from public view until other underlying issues could be resolved. The No. 3-ranked issue – the quality of data used in the formation of a CSA score – proved in many ways to be at the core of other issues, said committee members. Recommendations for fixing the issue included changing the definition of a U.S. Department of Transportationrecordable crash for purposes of CSA to find something that better shows a correlation to future crash risk than the allcrashes-count method used now; working with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and others to standardize data and reports; and mending the disparity in geographical enforcement by weighting nonsafety-related violations differently from states that are clear outliers and trying to normalize variation of data from heavily reporting states. – Todd Dills LaHood bowing out as Transportation Secretary U .S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Jan. 29 he would not be sticking around through President Obama's second term, but that he would remain until a successor is found. "It has been an honor and a privilege to lead the department, and I am grateful to President Obama for giving me such an extraordinary opportunity," LaHood said, calling the job "the best I've ever had." LaHood congratulated the U.S. Department of Transportation staff for securing funds in the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 and awarding billions of dollars in grants for transportationbased projects, reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration and passing the highway funding bill last summer. LaHood served as the only Republican in Obama's first-term cabinet. At press time, a replacement had not been named, but reports in mid-February pointed Scan the QR code with your smartphone or visit ccjdigital.com/subscribe-to-newsletters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newsletter filled with news, analysis, blogs and market condition articles. to National Transportation Safety Board director Deborah Hersman as a leading candidate. commercial carrier journal CCJ_0313_JOURNAL.indd 9 | march 2013 9 2/20/13 10:55 AM