Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/269152
14 | Overdrive | March 2014 Logbook GAO report faults CSA scoring The scoring system used by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in its Compliance, Safety, Accountability system is flawed and involves an incom- plete data set, a Government Account- ability Office report concluded last month. GAO also found the program particularly is unfair for small carriers. The GAO report also recommends FMCSA change the system due to various shortcomings found in the study. Safety Measurement System scoring problems "raise questions about whether SMS is effectively identifying carriers at highest risk for crashing," the report says. The GAO study found that: • The data being used to score carriers is inconsistent due to vari- ances in inspection and enforcement policies state to state; • Scores for small carriers are likely to be inflated by FMCSA's methodol- ogy and prone to significant fluctua- tions, given the limited data available for them. Therefore those fleets could have a hard time overcoming one inspection report that elevates it above a threshold for intervention for a BASIC (Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Category); • Some data used to calculate scores in the Unsafe Driving and Crash In- dicator BASICs are self-reported and therefore subject to inaccurate, missing or misleading reports from carriers; • A large chunk of the regulations used in SMS score calculations aren't violated enough to strongly associate them with crash risk. • There's a general lack of correla- tion between SMS scores and crash occurrence. A majority of carriers rat- ed as high-risk have not crashed at all. – Overdrive staff Agency counters with own study Two days after the Government Accountability Office's report on Compliance, Safety, Accountability, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Ad- ministration responded with a study that it said concluded the opposite: The Safety Measurement System for the most part identifies carriers that pose the greatest crash risk. Though FMCSA's study wasn't a direct rebuttal to GAO's report, one of its key conclusions showed SMS scores and their intervention thresholds identify carriers with crash rates 79 percent higher than those not identified for intervention. The agency said it used an "Effectiveness Test" to calculate that number by sim- ulating results for carriers based on its own data and then cross-checking that with actual crash involvement. FMCSA measured its findings based on crashes per 100 power units, and the 43,000 carriers it identified as above an intervention threshold per SMS scores had a crash rate of 4.82 per 100 power units. Those carriers not identified as above the threshold had a crash rate of 2.69 per 100 power units. The agency also responded to criticism of CSA's alleged bias against smaller carriers, pointing to their higher rate of crashes as the reason they're seen as "picked on" rather than a flaw in the system that unfairly singles them out. Carriers with fewer than five power units, which make up 75 percent of federally registered motor carriers, have a crash rate of 3.84 per 100 power units, compared to 3.51 for carriers with more than 50 power units and 2.98 for carriers with more than 500. FMCSA's study also made the point that the agency is more selective in targeting smaller carriers, as just 12 percent of carriers with five or fewer power units have been identified for intervention, relative to their CSA scores, whereas 49 percent of carriers with more than 500 power units have been targeted, as have 35 percent of carriers with between 50 and 500 power units. – Kevin Jones and James Jaillet Of the small share of one-truck carriers who are actually scored in a CSA BASIC, those carriers are far more likely than larger carriers to show scores above the agency's intervention thresholds. Percent of carriers above the intervention threshold Number of vehicles per carrier GAO analysis of FMCSA data Logbook_0314.indd 14 2/27/14 6:17 AM