Fleet Management Industry News

CSA Outreach

• FMCSA Releases New Shipper, Broker, and Insurer Resources
  

  The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program is now providing resources specifically geared towards shippers, brokers, and insurers about the agency’s publicly available data. FMCSA makes three sources of safety and compliance data available to the public. These sources are the Safety and Fitness Electronic Records system; the Licensing and Insurance Online Website; and CSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS). The new resources for shippers, brokers, and insurers consist of two factsheets and one PowerPoint presentation.
   
  FMCSA developed these new resources in response to feedback from safety stakeholders. One of the factsheets identifies and clarifies all three of FMCSA’s publicly available data sources and the other factsheet offers important facts about CSA’s SMS.  In addition, the PowerPoint presentation gives an overview of FMCSA’s publicly available data sources that includes screenshots from each of those sources.  All three resources can be found at this link: https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/resources.aspx?locationid=115.

  
  FMCSA will continue answering questions and feedback about its CSA program. The CSA Website publishes new information regularly, so make sure to visit it to keep up-to-date. Also, stay connected to CSA by subscribing to the RSS feed and signing up for the email subscription service (http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/Stay_Connected.aspx).

  
  
  
• CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS) website updated
  

  The CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS) website has been updated with the April 27, 2012 snapshot.  Check your safety assessment now at: http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms.

  Also available is FMCSA’s SMS Preview website.  Carriers can log in to the site to preview the first package of proposed changes to the SMS through two websites:

  1. Visit the CSA Website (http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/smspreview/) and log in with an FMCSA-issued U.S. DOT number and a personal identification number (PIN), or

  2. Log in to the FMCSA Portal (https://portal.fmcsa.dot.gov/login) and select the “CSA Outreach” link.

  FMCSA encourages motor carriers to view the SMS Preview to see how methodology changes will affect their SMS results. Written comments regarding the changes can be filed to the Federal Docket Management System, Docket ID Number FMCSA-2012-0074.

  NOTE TO CARRIERS: To login into the SMS or SMS Preview websites and see all of your safety data, you will need an FMCSA-issued U.S. DOT Number Personal Identification Number (PIN) (NOT a Docket Number PIN). If you do not know or have forgotten your PIN, you can request one via http://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/ and select 'Click here to request your Docket Number PIN and/or USDOT Number PIN.' Be sure to request a U.S. DOT Number PIN, NOT a Docket Number PIN.

  
  
  
• Motor Carriers Can Now Preview the First Package of SMS Enhancements
  

  The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is pleased to announce that motor carriers can now preview the first package of changes to the Safety Measurement System (SMS). FMCSA designed SMS to be improved over time as better technology, new data, and additional analysis become available. This release is the first in a series of improvements to SMS that will take place up to twice a year. FMCSA is providing a preview period for motor carriers and enforcement personnel before it uses the SMS changes to prioritize motor carriers for safety interventions and before it makes those changes available to the public. The SMS Preview begins on March 27, 2012 and runs through late June 2012.

  These first enhancements are the agency’s response to findings from its ongoing analyses of data and input from enforcement, industry, and other safety stakeholders. During the SMS Preview, FMCSA is collecting, assessing, and addressing feedback from preview participants, and may further refine the SMS enhancements prior to public implementation in summer 2012.

  As of March 27, 2012, carriers can access the SMS Preview through two websites:

  1.       Visit the CSA Website (https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/login.aspx) and log in with an FMCSA-issued U.S. DOT number and a personal identification number (PIN), or

  2.       Log in to the FMCSA Portal (https://portal.fmcsa.dot.gov/login ) and select the “CSA Outreach” link.

  FMCSA encourages motor carriers to view the SMS Preview to see how methodology changes will affect their SMS results.

  On the CSA Website’s Resources page, motor carriers and other stakeholders can access a foundational document that provides additional information about the first set of SMS changes. A Federal Register notice outlining the changes is also available for review.  Written comments regarding the changes can be filed to the Federal Docket Management System at http://www.regulations.gov, Docket ID Number FMCSA-2012-0074.

  
  
  
• FMCSA Responds to the Wells Fargo Equity Research Report on CSA
  

  The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has just released its review of the Wells Fargo Equity Research Report on the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program. Accompanying FMCSA’s review is a letter from FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro to Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance President, David Palmer, who requested an FMCSA review of the Wells Fargo report. Both the letter and the review support the CSA program and refute the findings contained in the Wells Fargo report.

  Based on the agency’s own analysis and research conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), FMCSA disagrees with the primary finding in the Wells Fargo report. FMCSA analysis shows significant statistical relationships between the Unsafe Driving and Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service (HOS)) Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) and crash risk for all carriers, as well as a subset of the largest carriers, while the Wells Fargo finding asserts that there is no statistically meaningful relationship between the Unsafe Driving/Fatigued Driving (HOS) BASICs and crash rates. 
   
  Approximately 200,000 motor carriers have sufficient crash or inspection activity to be assessed in at least one BASIC of the SMS. This group of 200,000 carriers includes carriers of all sizes, and they are involved in over 90 percent of all crashes. FMCSA believes that the Wells Fargo assertion that “only 12 percent of carriers have sufficient inspection data to be rated” relates to the 92,000 motor carriers that have sufficient negative information (i.e. violations or crashes) for the Safety Measurement System to assign a percentile to a BASIC.  These carriers are responsible for 83 percent of the crashes.

  FMCSA’s review responds in detail to the Wells Fargo report and its primary finding, and includes an appendix with graphs to show FMCSA’s and UMTRI’s results. Visit the CSA Website to read FMCSA’s review of the Wells Fargo report as well as Anne Ferro’s letter in support of CSA.

  
  
  
• FMCSA Participates in a Roundtable on CSA
  

  Last month, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Administrator Anne Ferro and members of her staff participated in the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Transportation Safety Roundtable to highlight Compliance, Safety, Accountability’s (CSA) positive impact on safety. The session provided FMCSA with an interactive opportunity to present current, accurate information on CSA and correct rumors and myths. The key points are as follows:

  • The Safety Measurement System (SMS) assesses the relative safety of motor carriers, which allows FMCSA to efficiently and effectively prioritize enforcement resources on motor carrier safety issues.
  • SMS is one of three web-based systems where the public can find information about motor carriers. The other two are the Safety and Fitness Electronic Records System (http://www.safersys.org/), which provides registration data and safety ratings, and the Licensing and Insurance Online Website (http://li-public.fmcsa.dot.gov/), which allows users to confirm that a motor carrier has active operating authority and adequate insurance.
  • CSA’s SMS has enough data to assess about 200,000 of the 525,000 active interstate motor carriers in at least one Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC); these 200,000 carriers are involved in over 90% of all interstate commercial motor vehicle crashes.
  • The Unsafe Driving and Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service) BASICs have strong relationships to future crash risk. In fact, an independent evaluation by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute found that carriers with either one of these two BASICs above FMCSA’s intervention thresholds had crash rates three times greater than those without BASICs exceeding FMCSA’s intervention thresholds.
  • CSA is improving safety performance. We see that roadside inspection violations declined by 9 percent in the 12 months after the SMS launch.
  • Roadside inspections documenting violations of regulations related to the Unsafe Driving BASIC are triggered by observed driving behaviors and not by a carrier’s percentile rank in the Unsafe Driving BASIC.
  • CSA provides motor carriers with opportunities to improve their BASIC percentile ranks by demonstrating that they have improved their roadside performance either through reduced crashes or clean roadside inspections; in fact, over 1 million of 3.5 million roadside inspections conducted annually are inspections with no violations.
  • CSA’s SMS identifies about the same number of small carriers that SafeStat did; and, of the carrier population with sufficient data to be assessed, SMS identifies a proportionate number of small, medium, and large carriers for CSA interventions.
  • FMCSA does not formally “rate” drivers.
    • The Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP), which is mandated by Congress, provides prospective motor carriers with driver inspection, crash, and violation history upon driver release.
    • SMS has tools that enable enforcement personnel to identify and address driver safety performance problems during a carrier investigation.
  • FMCSA and its State Partners have made great strides in improving roadside uniformity and data quality over the past several years.
    • Since 2004, FMCSA and State Partners have logged more than 27 million crash and inspection reports.
      • Less than 0.5% of these have received a Request for Data Review (RDR).
    • FMCSA recently revised its DataQs user guide in conjunction with the States and that guidance is helping to improve DataQs further.
    • FMCSA publishes a monthly evaluation of the completeness, timeliness, accuracy, and consistency of State-reported data.
    • FMCSA works closely with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) to establish and implement policies for consistent and uniform data collection at the roadside.
    • FMCSA is modifying roadside inspection software to align with CVSA’s recommendations, again, in an effort to make data collection more consistent and uniform.

  A copy of the presentation that FMCSA gave at the SBA’s Transportation Safety Roundtable on CSA is posted on the CSA Outreach Website. This website is the official resource for information about CSA. Stakeholders are encouraged to visit the website at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov and to sign up at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/stay_connected.aspx to receive regular email updates.