Proposed revisions to the U.S. DOT’s Compliance, Safety,Accountability carrier scoring program — and to how the DOT uses thosescores to target carriers deemed at risk for crashes — are beingwithdrawn, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announcedFriday in a formal notice. The changes, proposed in July 2015 by FMCSA,sought to better align CSA’s Safety Measurement System BASIC scores withcarriers’ risk of being involved in a crash.
However, the proposed reforms are being tabled due to ongoing work bythe agency to implement a larger overhaul of the CSA program. Spelledout in a Congressionally mandated report last June, the NationalAcademies of Science recommended that the agency rework the SMS and itsunderlying statistical model.
FMCSA says the reforms proposed in 2015 conflict with therecommendations issued by the NAS report. The NAS report was required byCongress later the same year, when lawmakers also forced FMCSA toremove from public view CSA’s SMS percentile rankings.
The reforms being withdrawn include:
(1) Changes to the so-called intervention thresholds used by the agency to target carriers deemed at risk of a crash;
(2) Segmenting the Hazmat Compliance BASIC (and making it public);
(3) Switching violations for operating while out of service to theUnsafe Driving BASIC (away from whatever BASIC caused the OOS order);and
(4) Increasing the maximum vehicle miles traveled used in the agency’scalculations to more accurately reflect operations of high-utilizationcarriers.
Under the changes, the interventional threshold in the VehicleMaintenance BASIC would have been lowered to the 75th percentile fromthe 80th percentile, meaning potentially more carriers would have beentargeted with warning letters, off- or on-site focused or comprehensiveaudits or other investigations. The intervention threshold in theControlled Substances BASIC would have been raised to the 90thpercentile, thus encompassing fewer fleets. It would have maintained the65th percentile intervention threshold for the BASICs the agency sayshave a stronger correlation to crash risk: Unsafe Driving, CrashIndicator and Hours of Service Compliance.
In October 2016, the agency implemented a preview website to showcarriers and owner-operators how their scores would have been affectedby these changes and other reforms proposed afterward. The agency saidFriday it has taken down the preview site.
FMCSA’s proposals sought to institute changes to better the systemalready in place. However, the 2017 report from the National Academiesof Science recommended a major overhaul of the system, starting with theroadside inspection data that feeds the SMS ratings. The report did notgo into great depth about how the agency should reconfigure the SMSsystem, but it did recommend that the agency scrap its current model fordetermining ratings and opt instead for one based on so-called “itemresponse theory.” An IRT model would more accurately target high-riskcarriers, NAS said.
The report also recommended the agency make the scoring system moretransparent and easier to understand and to depart from using relative,carrier-to-carrier comparison-based scoring as the sole means fortargeting carriers via safety scores.
FMCSA has not provided a timeline for when it will implement thereforms. However, FMCSA Administrator Ray Martinez told Congress in Maythat the agency has contracted with the NAS and is in the process ofdeveloping a reformed CSA program.
Before the NAS issued its report, FMCSA proposed other changes to theCSA system, including raising the minimum number of crashes neededbefore registering a Crash Indicator BASIC score. The agency in October2016 issued a proposal to increase that number from two crashes to threecrashes. The agency’s Friday announcement did not mention that proposalas one being withdrawn.
Original article provided by: https://www.ccjdigital.com/fmcsa-scraps-2015-proposal-to-alter-csa-to-pursue-larger-reforms-to-program/
