FMCSA amends SMS Agency wants to better identify high-risk carriers

Addressing concerns raised by the American Trucking Associations and other industry groups earlier this summer about the design of Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 (CSA 2010), the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced updates to the Safety Management System (SMS) methodology intended to better identify carriers deemed “high risk” or otherwise having safety compliance problems.

Most notably, the measure of exposure will be changed from Power Units only to a combination of Power Units and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) in the Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories). In addition, these two BASICs will change from using Power Units as a safety event grouping (formerly referred to as peer grouping) to using the number of crashes for the Crash Indicator and the number of inspections with a violation for the Unsafe Driving BASIC.

“ATA believes the use of mileage data rather than merely fleet size to measure exposure data is definitely a step in the right direction,” says Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for the American Trucking Associations. “Also, establishing peer groups based on the number of violations rather than fleet size acknowledges the variability of the state inspection and enforcement programs, because different carriers operate in different environments. It’s clear that some states have more robust roadside inspection programs, and this change properly acknowledges that fact.”

Other updates to the SMS:

• The measure of exposure will change from Power Units to the number of relevant inspections in the Controlled Substances/Alcohol BASIC;

• Severity weights for some roadside inspection violations will be updated; and

• FMCSA will employ a more strategic approach to addressing motor carriers with a history of size and weight violations rather than counting these violations in the Cargo-Related BASIC. – Jeff Crissey