Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/251785
P O S T I N G G R A D E S W h y t h e F M C S A i s P r o m o t i n g P u b l i c U s e o f S M S D a t a " T h e a g e n c y c o n t i n u e s t o i g n o r e s y s t e m i c , l o g i c a l a n d d a t a f l a w s i n S M S " A large portion of SMS methodology was released to the public without rulemaking in December 2010. ree years and two lawsuits later, SMS methodology remains a work in progress which has been roundly criticized as an inaccurate measure of individual carrier performance. e agency and its supporters remain doggedly committed to average trend line analysis which shows some correlation between percentile rankings or number of golden icons and average crash scores in some of the BASICs. Yet the agency continues to ignore systemic, logical and data flaws in SMS which vitiate any conclusion that SMS methodology can accurately predict an individual carrier's safety performance. Percentile rankings and golden triangles are not based upon objective individual performance but are the result of complicated "grade on the curve" methodology which presumes that statistically over half of the carriers the system can measures will be in some sense labeled as "damaged goods" or "a bad actor" in one or more of the public BASICs. (Currently more than 53,000 of the 88,000 carriers measured under SMS have at least one published golden triangle.) When 49 percent of the carriers branded with three golden triangles have no recorded accidents in the past two years, one must ask how the agency can continue to claim SMS methodology as an accurate measure of carrier safety performance. In three years BY HENRY E. SEATON 12 IT MAGAZINE V o l . 8 , N o . 1