Scores of inspections

CSA 2010 could fuel demand for maintenance technology

By Aaron Huff

For the past year, Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 has been a popular discussion topic in boardrooms and at industry events. The highly anticipated safety regime is scheduled to go live in December, and when it does, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will begin using the Safety Measurement System (SMS) in lieu of the current SafeStat to determine safety ratings for motor carriers. The SMS will create a monthly safety fitness determination for motor carriers based on seven Behavioral Analysis Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs).

Successful preventive maintenance programs will result in fewer roadside inspections and citations, which in turn will result in a better CSA 2010 safety score.

With the substantial amount of live CSA 2010 data that fleets soon will have to manage, it might be easy to overlook the impact that a successful preventive maintenance program can have on a company’s overall safety score. Successful programs will result in fewer roadside inspections and citations, which in turn will result in a better safety score. A PM program especially will become important in regard to tires, brakes, lighting and other obvious defects that might show up during a roadside inspection.

Driver inspections

The new regulations under CSA 2010 include 275 maintenance items, and a driver can be found in violation for 202 of them during a roadside inspection. Violations count against a driver’s score just as they count against a motor carrier.

Ultimately, the driver is responsible for identifying that his vehicle is in safe operating condition and for reporting those items that are not. Since drivers can’t make most of the repairs or adjustments, they will be conducting more thorough pre- and post-trip inspections to catch problems – and will expect them to be fixed quickly.