USDOT’s promised changes on Crash BASIC don’t materialize

In recent weeks, the truck and bus industries have been vocal in criticizing the USDOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) slowness in reacting to, and adjusting, its 17-month-old Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program which uses safety performance data to stratify motor carrier’s safety risk.

While clearly signaling its intention to consider changes to CSA, especially in the crash accountability BASIC, FMCSA postponed its promised policy change intended to establish a fairer method to fix accountability for motor carrier accidents.

Currently, because of the format of police accident reports, which are the source document for most truck and bus crashes, any time a motor carrier is involved in a reportable incident, data coding records it as “truck-involved.” This means that unless the police report clearly delineates which driver was at fault, the truck is often considered culpable in the CSA system.

In a research report relied on by FMCSA in its design of CSA, the authors concluded that, even when not at fault in a specific crash, accidents involving motor carriers correlate highly with a risk of that motor carrier being involved in future accidents. Despite that evidence, for many years the government has wanted to find a “better way” of establishing crash accountability and has been exploring a range of cost effective and fair methods that will not overburden the agency’s staff or its state counterparts. States and local governments, where the initial police report is recorded, would play a big role in any solution.

The regulated industries hoped to see the change announced this spring, as promised. Instead, the Agency announced the policy was “not ready for prime time” — revealing that it needed to do more analysis to determine the best approach. In addition, other groups complained that the public needs to be able to comment and challenge any changes in the current way crashes are recorded and subsequently considered in CSA risk calculations.

Getting this issue right is vital to the central purpose of CSA and a carrier’s safety measurement scores.

That is because the crash BASIC is the most important measure in the CSA system. Violating hours of service requirements, receiving violations for vehicle maintenance defects, or not having a valid medical card are, of course, important surrogate measures of a carrier/driver’s safety compliance. But it is having a crash that is the legitimate fault of the carrier that is the truest outcome measure that most correlates with risk.

Over-representation in crashes, normalized by mileage and size of carrier, reflects likely breakdowns in one or more of the other 6 BASICS. Intervening with companies with poor records on these measures is what the Safety Measurement System aims to do. By getting involved in bringing carriers into compliance with the other 6 BASICS, the risk of crashes is reduced since the carrier’s safety management deficiencies are ostensibly addressed.

FMCSA’s promise of a policy change that affects everyone — carriers, safety advocates, drivers, brokers, law enforcement, attorneys, state data agencies, etc. — is important enough to expect an ongoing dialogue with these groups as FMCSA moves forward to find a reasonable resolution.

Certain issues require government independence; this issue, though, could benefit from a collaborative problem-solving approach so that high risk motor carriers that are crash prone are accurately identified and dealt with appropriately.