Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/466315
JOURNAL NEWS 12 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2015 T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is granting states $30 million to invest in infrastructure for technology that collects and sends real-time safety data to inspectors and enforcers. The money was made available through two programs: Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks, and Performance Registration Information Systems Management. CVISN will award $25 million for deploying technology that focuses on high-risk operators, electronically screens commercial vehicles and allows for online application and issuance of registration and fuel tax credentials. Through PRISM, $5 million will go toward integrating state registration and licensing systems. It will determine the eligibility of a carrier or registrant at the time of licens- ing or registration of the vehicles and automatically sus- pend or withhold ineligible registration from one state to the other. States should begin receiving the grant money this spring. – James Jaillet States getting $30 million for safety tech investments I ncorporating crash accountability into the Compliance Safety Accountability program would not improve the U.S. Department of Transportation's ability to target carriers most at risk for crashes, nor would it be easy to implement or cost- effective, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration concluded last month. Crash accountability, or lack thereof, has been one of the more frustrating issues for carriers since the late 2010 onset of CSA. Industry stakeholders say the agency does motor carriers and the motoring public a disservice by not accounting for crash fault in the crashes listed in CSA's Safety Measurement System. With visibility given to all crashes regardless of fault, carriers see business decisions based on such information, from decisions on insurance premiums to hiring. The crash accountability study has been in the works for some time and was com- missioned to evaluate both the impact on the CSA program of implementing crash fault weighting and the agency's ability to implement such weighting while relying on state and local resources for information when crashes occur. In short, the agency concluded from its study that little bene- fit would be found by modifying the Crash Indicator BASIC in CSA's SMS to weight crashes based on fault or circumstances. Only when fatal crashes are weighted do the Crash Indicator BASIC rankings improve, FMCSA's study found. Fatal crashes, however, only account for 3 percent of all crashes in the agency's Motor Carrier Management Information System. And because the process for determining crash weight- ing – receiving accident reports from police, analyzing and making crash fault determination, weighting the crash appro- priately and then going through an appeals process – would be lengthy, incorporating crash fault into SMS rankings may be a moot point, the agency said, as SMS rankings only use crashes from the preceding two-year period. Simply gathering the appro- priate data from enforcers to make a crash fault deter- mination would be difficult, FMCSA's study concluded, as the "results suggest [enforc- ers] may not provide suffi- cient information to support crash weighting determina- tions." The agency's report also said incorporating crash account- ability into CSA would cost between $3.9 million and $11.1 million each year, depending on how many accidents are reviewed, the appeals brought and the agency's final process for determining crash weighting. For the study, FMCSA said it used accident reports from 10,982 crashes. Of those, 91 percent (9,884) met the criteria to be reviewed, and 9 percent (1,008) did not. – James Jaillet FMCSA: Weighting crash fault in CSA would be inconsequential, cumbersome Crash accountability in CSA, or lack thereof, has been one of the more frustrating issues for carriers since the late 2010 onset of CSA.