Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/709236
Logbook 16 | Overdrive | August 2016 The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month announced plans for a two-year pilot program to test a form of "crash ac- countability" in its Compli- ance, Safety, Accountability program. The plan would allow carriers to contest crashes counted against them in CSA and potential- ly remove those found to be nonpreventable. To view FMCSA's Federal Register notice published July 12, go to Regulations.gov and search FMCSA- 2014- 0177. Comments will be accepted through Sept. 12. Then, after a subsequent review by FMCSA, the agency will announce a start date of the program and any changes made to the original plan. The pilot program will focus on four crash types: When a truck was (1) struck by a motorist driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, (2) hit by a motorist driving in the wrong direc- tion, (3) struck in the rear or (4) struck while it was legally stopped or parked. FMCSA hopes to receive public comment on these types of crashes and what documents could be upload- ed to the DataQs system, in addition to police reports, to help prove the crash was nonpreventable. The agency's announce- ment comes just a year and a half after an FMCSA-pub- lished study concluded that implementing crash account- ability or crash weighting into CSA would be too cumbersome and would not improve carriers' SMS BA- SIC scores. In contrast, the American Transportation Research Institute last year found that carriers' Crash Indicator BASIC scores would improve if the agency removed crashes that were not the carrier's fault. The lack of crash accountability in CSA — namely, using crashes that were in no way the fault of carriers against them in their CSA percentile rankings — has been one of the trucking industry's chief complaints against the program. FMCSA last year re- moved the Crash Indicator BASIC from public view in an attempt to remedy the issue, though Crash Indica- tor BASIC ratings remain available to law enforcement to use to target carriers for intervention. – James Jaillet CSA crash weighting trial planned Under FMCSA's pilot program, carriers would be able to challenge crashes where it is evident the commercial vehicle was not at fault. Three-crash scoring threshold proposed The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Adminis- tration proposed raising the minimum number of crashes to three from the current two before a carrier receives a Crash Indicator BASIC rating in the Compliance, Safety, Accountability system. Currently, if a carrier is involved in two crashes in the trailing 24-month period, crashes will be included in its Safety Mea- surement System rank- ings. Under the proposed change, carriers would need to record three crash- es in the rolling 24-month period before the crashes would enter into their SMS scores. The agency says an analysis of the proposed change barely shifted the intervention threshold for the Crash Indicator BASIC, raising it to 6.34 crashes per 100 power units from the current 6.33. "This suggests that using a minimum of three crashes would continue to identify a group of carriers with high crash rates," the agen- cy wrote in the document proposing the change. – Overdrive staff FINES FOR VIOLATIONS of fed- eral safety regulations have been updated for inflation and went into effect Aug. 1. Some fines are higher than previous years, while some are lower. T.F. SCOTT DARLING was confirmed as administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration by a U.S. Senate voice vote July 14. Darling has run the agency on an interim basis since the 2014 departure of Anne Ferro.