Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
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Logbook Crash weight plan for CSA under review The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is conducting internal and peer reviews on its Crash Weighting Research Plan it will release this year. The agency is studying crash accountability as an accident predictor and the feasibility of incorporating it into a carrier's Safety Measurement System score under the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program. As it stands now, all crashes – even those that clearly are not the carrier's fault – are weighted the same in a carrier's CSA score. This has been one of the chief criticisms of CSA. FMCSA's study examines if police reports have the quality and consistency to support crash weighting determinations. The research plan will help gauge if determining accountability would justify an annual $2 million to $3 million needed to analyze up to 100,000 crash reports each year. FMCSA spokesman Duane DeBruyne said the agency has FMCSA is studying crash accountability as an accident predictor. used its Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee and other stakeholders to develop the study's scope and objectives. "Upon its release later this year, the agency will announce the next steps," DeBruyne said. The agency did not indicate what types of steps might follow or a timeline for proceeding. FMCSA is working with the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe Center in developing a tool to establish fair crash accountability and examine how it should affect a carrier's SMS score. – Jill Dunn House reps protest hours rule Fifty-one members of the U.S. Hous e of Representatives last month sent U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx a letter to express their "continued deep concern" about the hours of service rule that went into effect July 1. They pointed to the 34-hour restart provision within the rule as restrictive and not studied sufficiently. The letter asks that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration provide Congress with the date it plans to finish the hours of service study required by the current highway funding law. The law, MAP-21, required FMCSA to finish a field study by March 31, 2013. The study still has not been completed and submitted to Congress, but the new rule was enacted anyway, "counter to commonsense," the letter says. Responding with his own letter, Foxx wrote that the MAP-21 legislation "was enacted well after the" final hours rule was published in December 2011. He said the hours rule "is also the result of input from a wide range of stakeholders, including trucking companies, drivers, law enforcement, unions and safety advocates," in addition to the aforementioned research. The data collection phase of the field study is complete, says Foxx, who also wrote that FMCSA is in the "final stages of analysis." Foxx says the agency could not provide a date when the study will be reported to Congress. – James Jaillet THE INTERSTATE 5 BRIDGE that collapsed over the Skagit River in Washington in late May reopened last month after a permanent span of bridge was finished, replacing a temporary span. The bridge collapsed after a truck struck a support beam. NORTH CAROLINA Gov. Pat McCrory signed the second of two bills that limit the state's ability to toll existing lanes. The Republican governor signed HB 92, a technical corrections bill that prohibits reducing the number of existing nontoll general purpose highway lanes. Earlier legislation was passed to limit the state's ability to impose tolls on existing interstates. 16 | Overdrive | October 2013 Logbook_1013.indd 16 10/1/13 7:39 AM