The American Trucking Associations on Tuesday, March 20, expressed its concerns over the recent decision by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, after pressure from anti-truck groups, to continue to hold the trucking industry responsible in its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program for every truck-involved crash, including those which the truck driver could not have prevented.
“With FMCSA moving ahead with its CSA carrier oversight system, it is more important than ever that the agency uses not only the best data, but also common sense to ensure it is targeting the right carriers and drivers for oversight,” said Bill Graves, ATA president and chief executive officer. “By backtracking on their commitment to implement a crash accountability determination process in early 2012 to hold carriers accountable for crashes clearly caused by the actions or inactions of a truck driver, FMCSA has bowed to anti-industry interest groups and unfairly called into question the integrity of police accident reports prepared by America’s law enforcement community.”
ATA, and other industry groups had requested – and FMCSA had agreed – to develop a process where police accident reports would be reviewed to determine crash accountability and remove nonpreventable crashes from a carrier’s CSA profile. After pressure from some special interest groups who have questioned the reliability of police accident reports, FMCSA now has shelved these plans, according to ATA.
“Every fleet dreads word that one of their trucks and drivers has been involved in a crash,” said Dan England, ATA chairman and chairman of Salt Lake City-based C.R. England. “Every day, companies and drivers are working hard to make sure our roads are as safe as they can be, which is why ATA has supported FMCSA in its effort to improve carrier oversight through CSA. However, we all know that not every crash involving one of our trucks can be prevented by the truck driver, so we’ve been making the common-sense reasonable request for several years that FMCSA hold us accountable for what we can prevent and not hold us accountable in the CSA program for crashes we simply cannot prevent. Unfortunately, it seems that FMCSA wants to side with special interests rather than with law enforcement and thousands of safety conscious carriers in this country.”
