The comment for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Safety Fitness Determination proposed rule comes to a close Monday, May 23.
Comments can be made by searching Docket No. FMCSA-2015-0001 at www.regulations.gov, or click here to access the comment page directly.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking outlined FMCSA’s plan to update its safety rating system for carriers by integrating on-road safety data from inspections, along with the results of carrier investigations and crash reports. All of this would determine a motor carrier’s overall safety fitness on a monthly updated basis.
The rule has drawn much ire from the trucking industry, particularly for its use of CSA Safety Measurement system ratings to determine a carrier’s safety fitness. There are also efforts under way in Congress to block the rulemaking, as Congress mandated last year that FMCSA no longer use the SMS rankings to judge carriers until certain reforms to the system had been implemented. Read more about the potential issues with the Safety Fitness Determination rule at this link:
The SFD rule would replace the current three-tier federal rating system of “Satisfactory, Conditional and Unsatisfactory” for carriers with a single determination of “Unfit,” which would require the carrier to either improve its operations or shut down.
Under the proposed SFD rule, five of the seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) would be analyzed for potential failure. Failure in any two of five the BASICs – Hours of Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Unsafe Driving, Vehicle Maintenance and Hazardous Materials – would result in an unfit rating.
