Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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LEADING NEWS, TRUCKING MARKET CONDITIONS AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS Coalition challenges safety fitness rulemaking A coalition of eight groups simi- lar to the one that led last year's ultimately successful fight against the so-called Interim Hiring Standard proposed in the initial House version of the highway bill issued a challenge to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Safety Fitness Determination rulemaking ahead of its release. Like the scores currently pulled in the Compliance Safety Accountability Safety Measurement System's Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, the SFD rating would update more frequently. Currently, carriers can receive Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory safety ratings only after a compli- ance review, something that rarely happens more than once a year. In a letter to members of Congress and FMCSA Acting Administrator Scott Darling, the groups say FMCSA should con- duct the congressionally required review of, and make recom- mended changes to, the CSA SMS before releasing any SFD rule. The coalition cites the agency's own summary of the SFD rule, which notes the safety rat- ing would rely on "on-road safety performance in relation to five of the Agency's seven" BASICs in the SMS. – Todd Dills FMCSA proposes to tie safety rating to CSA SMS T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month announced a long- in-the-works rulemaking proposal designed to update its safety fitness rating methodology by integrating on-road safety data from inspections, along with the results of carrier investigations and crash reports, to determine a motor carrier's overall safety fitness on a monthly basis. The proposed Safety Fitness Determination rule would replace the current three-tier federal rating system of Satisfactory, Conditional and Unsatisfactory for federally regulated commercial motor carriers, in place since 1982, with a single determination of Unfit, which would require the carrier to either improve its operations or shut down. "This update to our methodology will help the agency focus on carriers with a higher crash risk," said FMCSA Acting Administrator Scott Darling. "Carriers that we identify as unfit to operate will be removed from our roadways until they improve." Once in place, the agency believes the rule would enable it to properly assess the safety fitness of about 75,000 companies a month as fit or unfit. By comparison, the agency said it only is able to investigate 15,000 motor carriers annually under the current system, with less than half of those companies receiving a safety rating. Three data sources underlie the meth- odology the agency proposes to use: The Compliance Safety Accountability Safety Measurement System's Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories; investigation results; or a combination of on-road safety data and investigation information. The carrier's performance in relation to a fixed failure threshold for five of the agency's BASICs will be taken into consideration: Hours of Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Unsafe Driving, Vehicle Maintenance and Hazardous Material. Failure of any two will result in an unfit rating. A carrier's status in relation to that fixed measure would not be affected by other carriers' performance, a key difference from the CSA SMS' treatment of the BASICs. The SFD also would draw on traditional compliance review-type investigations for fail- ure determinations in each BASIC. Failure of a BASIC based on either crash data (Crash Indicator) or compliance with drug and alcohol requirements (Controlled Substances/ Alcohol) would occur only after a comprehensive follow-up investigation. The proposal's publication in the Federal Register last month also marked the advent of a 60-day public comment period. FMCSA will be providing a reply comment period allowing for an addi- tional 30 days. Go to fmcsa. dot.gov/sfd. – Todd Dills Scan the QR code with your smartphone or visit ccjdigital.com/news/subscribe-to-news- letters to sign up for the CCJ Daily Report, a daily e-mail newsletter filled with news, analysis, blogs and market condition articles. 10 commercial carrier journal | february 2016 FMCSA designed an online SFD Calculator to allow motor carriers to use their own data to test how the proposed rule would affect them.