FMCSA defends CSA 2010 model, schedule

The Trucker Staff

6/23/2010

WASHINGTON — The trucking industry’s top regulator says her agency is moving forward as planned with a long-awaited safety program, even as lawmakers and trucking representatives suggested the agency should focus more on getting the program right than on rolling it out on time.

Noting that a field test in nine states wraps up this month, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Anne Ferro on Tuesday told a House panel that preliminary findings show a 35 percent increase in investigations under Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, meaning more carriers are being reached, and with greater efficiency.

The highways and transit subcommittee called the hearing to get an update on CSA 2010, the new system to oversee motor carriers and commercial motor vehicle drivers.

“And we have anecdotal evidence of carriers who examined and changed their business practices as the result of a CSA2010 contact and improved their safety — further confirming the old adage that, ‘what gets measured gets done,’” Ferro said.

The roll-out for CSA 2010 officially began in April with the carrier data preview, Ferro explained. As previously announced, the actual safety measurement system — in which carriers will be compared to industry peers —will be previewed in late August, followed by full public availability at the end of the year. Remaining components — warning letters, the intervention process and the new fitness determination rule — will continue to the end of fiscal year 2011, she added. 

“By that time, CSA 2010 will be known only by its initials, ‘CSA,’ or compliance, safety, accountability,” Ferro said.

The American Trucking Associations, however, continues to voice concern about the current design of CSA 2010.

“FMCSA deserves to be applauded for its development and implementation of CSA 2010 to date. The agency has gone to great lengths to test the program, develop and implement an extensive outreach and education program, and demonstrated a willingness to accept stakeholder input,” said Keith Klein, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Minnesota-based truckload carrier Transport America, speaking on behalf of ATA. “However, ATA has a number of serious concerns relating to how CSA 2010 will work that, if not addressed, will have a dramatic impact on motor carriers and on highway safety.”

Specifically, ATA would like for FMCSA to make crash accountability or “causation” determinations on truck-involved crashes before entering them into a carrier’s record, so that drivers and carriers are held accountable only for crashes they cause; to use vehicle miles traveled rather than the number of trucks or power units, as a carrier’s exposure measure; and to focus on using only actual citations for moving violations, not “warnings” issued by law enforcement.

ATA is also concerned about how the severity weights for violations are assigned; measuring carriers based on violations committed by drivers who have since been terminated; measuring carriers based on citations that have been dismissed in a court of law; inequitable measurement of open deck or flatbed carriers; overly broad peer groups; and inconsistent state enforcement practices.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, however, is “positive” about CSA 2010, said Executive Vice President Todd Spencer, who called it “a major step in the right direction.”

“For far too long, FMCSA’s enforcement priorities focused primarily on targeting truck drivers — and really didn’t go much farther at all,” Spencer said. “This has been an upside-down effort of drivers being  held responsible for just about anything and everything related to trucking — a particularly absurd notion since drivers are not required to be trained on the vast majority of operator and equipment regulations for which they are being held responsible.”

Spencer also said that OOIDA doesn’t share “the sky is falling” view that CSA 2010 is going to pull hundreds of thousands of drivers off the road. The association does agree with concerns over warning tickets and at fault accidents.

“This program, like any program, gets down to ‘the devil is in the details,’” Spencer said.

Subcommittee Chairman Peter DeFazio told Ferro that he was “a bit puzzled” as to the timing and implementation of the program. He noted that an official report on findings from the test states isn’t due until December — so why not wait to roll out CSA 2010 nationwide until then?

Ferro replied that the operations model test had provided substantial information to verify the validity of the CSA 2010 measures.

“At this point we have a strong confidence in the system,” she said, noting FMCSA is continually fine-tuning the plan. “In terms of a first phase, we’re very confident that this is the right step to take this year.”

DeFazio also questioned the states’ ability to meet CSA 2010 program demands, including both legally and technologically.

Many states are still in “wait and see mode,” said Interim Executive Director Steve Keppler of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the umbrella organization for state enforcement agencies.

“There are some concerns, it’s really an unknown at this point,” he said. “We’ll continue to work with FMCSA to get some clarity on what those implementation issues are.”

To Klein’s suggestion that carrier’s should be rewarded under CSA 2010 for getting rid of bad drivers — and not be saddled with their poor records — Ferro replied that carriers are not punished for “isolated incidents,” but that CSA 2010 looks for patterns that warrant intervention and correction.

“[Carriers] do well and reward themselves — their ratings down the road, their insurance view down the road, their shipper view down the road — by taking care of the that driver appropriately, with dismissal,” Ferro said

Spencer argued that veteran drivers “have been spurned” since deregulation as companies look to fill seat with a series of less expensive, less experienced drivers.

“For the first time, it’s going to require the motor carrier industry to belly-up to the bar and not only to assume responsibility, but that responsibility is going to engage them on the real need to fix some of the situations that create unsafe atmospheres for drivers,” Spencer said, citing dealing with shippers and receivers, load and detention time. “At a minimum, what this program will do is drag the motor carrier kicking and screaming into this situation. You can’t simply pass the buck to the driver and say ‘we fired him, problem solved.’”

The accuracy of the data on which carriers will be measured — and the public availability of data — raised a number of concerns.

“Until we get the data to be accurate and reflective of the true performance of a carrier, making it public misrepresents those carriers that are safe and might get a false positive,” Klein said. “Or, even worse, having unsafe carriers operating that don’t get flagged in the system.”

And while OOIDA is similarly concerned with the accuracy of the data, Spencer complained that a large number of accidents are not DOT reportable — and therefore not counted.

“Our member’s trucks are crashed into at truck stops on a regular basis by many of the companies that simply churn out untrained, unqualified drivers simply to fill seats,” Spencer said. “These chronic driver shortages we have are nothing more than the industry’s propensity to burn up drivers. Those guys do have lots and lots of crashes, and those need somehow to be reflected.”

Keppler admitted that data accuracy and consistency had been an issue in the past, but that recent efforts to improve reporting from the states have worked.

“The data is valid, accurate and timely,” Keppler said. “The public availability helps encourage other people in the safety accountability chain to view that data and take action.”

Ferro also emphasized accountability, and noted the carriers have had the opportunity to preview their data — and that those who have not should do so. Carriers should also use the DataQ process to challenge and correct erroneous reports.

Unfortunately, as DeFazio noted, the states may not have the resources — and are unlikely to receive much help — to fully respond to an expected onslaught of challenges, as carriers react to their public standing under CSA 2010.

“I’m very concerned about this phenomenon and how we’re going to deal with it,” DeFazio said.

Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar noted that when FMCSA was created, then-Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater announced a goal to reduce fatalities involving commercial motor vehicles by 50 percent within a decade. In ten years, the number of fatalities has fallen from 5,362 in 1999 to 4,229 in 2008 — an improvement, but far from the original goal.

Oberstar criticized the agency for “watering down” its statistics, measuring improvements by calculating the fatality rate based on vehicle miles traveled. He suggested that the agency needed to make the number of fatalities the bottom line when measuring the success of its mission.

Ferro assured him that the agency was very much aware of lives lost and saved.

“We don’t think in our daily work about rates. We think about people,” Ferro said. “Our focus is saving lives through a significant reduction in crashes with motor vehicles. CSA 2010 is a core component of ensuring that anyone we credential maintains a high standard.”

Kevin Jones of The Trucker staff can be reached for comment at kevinj@thetrucker.com.

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