Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/555101
14 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | AUGUST 2015 JOURNAL NEWS U .S. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) last month filed a bill aimed at reform- ing the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, including making its rulemaking pro- cess more open to industry stakehold- ers and Congress and more transpar- ent to the public. The Trucking Rules Updated by Comprehensive and Key Safety Reform Act (TRUCK Safety Reform Act) (S.1669) would require FMCSA to conduct a comprehensive review of all rules, regulations, regulatory guidance and enforcement policies. The agency also would have to publish a schedule of the process and describe how it will accomplish that review. Fischer's bill would require FMCSA to make public the review's findings once complete. It then has 24 months in which to, if necessary, change its rules and enforcement procedures to make sure they are consistent and uniform. Fischer's bill also seeks to reform the process that FMCSA uses to create its regulations. At the heart of this provision is greater involvement of motor carri- ers of all sizes, and more scrutiny of the agency's cost-benefit analysis, including independent peer review. The proposed law was sent to the Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). Fischer has been a critic of FMCSA and its recent initiatives, especially its 2013 hours-of-service rule and its Compliance Safety Accountability scor- ing program. – David Hollis Senate bill would reform FMCSA, review existing regulations T he large, complex carrier measurement and ranking system that makes up the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Compliance Safety Accountability program is out of sync with real-word crash risk and needs to be realigned to better predict carrier safety, according to a year-old report. The report, issued by a so-called independent review team, actually was com- pleted and given to the U.S. Department of Transportation in July 2014, but the department just made it public June 30. It came in response to a 2013 call by the National Transportation Safety Board for an audit of FMCSA's carrier oversight practices. NTSB said in its 2013 report that FMCSA had missed the mark in trying to remove "bad actor" carriers from U.S. roadways, citing four major fatal crashes in which FMCSA clearly had enough red flags to take action on the carriers at fault but did not. While the independent review team's study covered FMCSA's oversight as a whole, it focused on the CSA program and areas that need revision. The committee's main recommendation to the agency is to hurry the long- awaited Safety Fitness Determination rule to implementation, as it is expected to help better sync CSA scores with crash risk. – James Jaillet T he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is proposing to make public another of the Compliance Safety Accountability program's Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category scores, one of several changes the agency is proposing for the Safety Measurement System that it uses to measure the safety of motor carriers and prioritize them for interven- tion actions. In addition to taking the Hazmat BASIC public, a move made more significant with a recent policy change integrating Hazmat SMS scores into the permitting process, FMCSA's proposal includes: • Changing some of the SMS intervention thresholds to better reflect the cor- relation between the BASIC and crash risk; • Segmenting the Hazmat BASIC by cargo tank and non-cargo tank carriers; • Reclassifying violations for operating while out of service as under the Unsafe Driving BASIC instead of the BASIC of the underlying OOS violation; and • Increasing the maximum vehicle miles traveled used in the utilization factor. FMCSA said the proposed SMS changes were a direct result of feedback from stakeholders and the agency's ongoing improvement efforts. – Matt Cole and Todd Dills U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) CSA needs revamping, review team tells FMCSA FMCSA looking to change CSA intervention thresholds, make hazmat category public