Even as the motor carrier industry and its customers get accustomed to the government’s new safety measurement system -—Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) — the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is making certain improvements to the program.

The most important revisions appear likely to come in the seven BASICS — the individual measures that calculate carriers’ on-the-road history and crash involvement.

Right now, five of the seven BASICS can be seen by the public while the Cargo Securement and Crash BASICS are withheld from public view (although available to the individual motor carrier using their DOT-issued PIN). DOT has indicated that it will likely make minor tweaks to the five public BASICS, significant changes to the Cargo Securement BASIC, and a process for improved validation of the Crash BASIC.

Changes to the Cargo BASIC

First, the Cargo BASIC was found to disproportionately affect certain operating segments, particularly flatbed carriers. In addition the severity weights that the government attached to violations that reflect the violation’s correlation with crash risk were assigned high values in this BASIC.

In the next few months, you are likely to see a major recalibration of the Cargo Securement BASIC which will reflect a more valid and fair measure of safety risk. In the meantime, carriers should not assume that the severity weights will be seriously diluted and should act now to remedy the conditions that have resulted in a high score in this area. Among other measures, load securement refresher training and better monitoring and checking of freight before it leaves the terminal by someone other than the driver/employee who originally secured the load can help contribute to better outcomes in this BASIC.

Alterations to the Crash BASIC

There is perhaps no BASIC more important to the entire truck/bus/shipper/enforcement
community than the Crash BASIC. This is because the government’s premise is that “past crashes are the best predictor of future crashes” and the entire CSA program was developed to establish competent ways to identify and intervene with carriers that pose the greatest risk to the travelling public before they are involved in a crash. Find the highest risk operators, intervene aggressively with them, prod them into compliance or get them out of the transportation business.

Historically, though, there were problems caused by the limitations of the data source that populates the Crash BASIC and which records crash involvement, i.e., police accident reports. This is mainly due to the nature of crashes — usually local police respond, fill out the report, and do not always state on the report which driver(s) “caused” the crash.

So when the states report the crash, the report usually notes that a commercial vehicle was involved in the accident but the form does not always identify the accountable party. This often results in a carrier being coded in the government’s databases as having a recordable accident that may or may not have been the carrier’s fault. For decades, DOT has tried to find a resolution of this problem but, since it requires thousands of police units, the states, etc., all being willing to agree to a reasonable and simple process, including how to pay for it, the solution has been elusive.

It seems, though, that progress is being made to establish a way for carriers and drivers to ask DOT for a review of specific accident reports that would be conducted by a trained crash analyst. The government is working on a new procedure that will allow for a review and decision regarding fixing “fault” for individual accidents where the cause is unclear and allow for the carrier to have some degree of due process in establishing whether a particular crash could have been prevented by the truck/bus driver.

This opportunity to challenge crash reports, especially after the carrier/driver has exhausted its efforts at the state/local level, is something the industry has been persistently pressing the federal government to establish. It is unclear when this new procedure will be “open for business” but until it is up and running and includes time for the government to evaluate its workability, the Crash BASIC will likely remain private to the motor carrier.

Companies should analyze their crashes

Again, as earlier urged, companies should be analyzing their crashes and striving to reduce the risks of having any crashes at all by focusing on the full safety management strategies of the company. If you believe your drivers are not at fault and seem to “always be in the wrong place at the wrong time” when they get into accidents, you may want to reconsider that point of view. Evidence points to the fact that most accidents are, in fact, preventable.

If, for example, your drivers have many intersection crashes, explore if the driver is perhaps speeding through the yellow light and not clearing the trailer from the intersection before oncoming traffic enters; for rear end collisions, ensure all lamps and lights are properly working so that trailing traffic is warned the driver is braking. In the end, it is very unlikely that the other driver is always the culprit.

As always, carriers should continually monitor their CSA scores, take corrective action, and strive to earn BASIC scores that signal that safety is a core value and that customers can be confident that the carrier runs a safe operation.

Rose A. McMurray, former Chief Safety Officer at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, is Chief Transportation Advisor at FDRsafety and consults with carriers on improving their CSA scores and other motor carrier and road safety issues. She may be contacted at rmcmurray@fdrsafety.com or 1-888-755-8010.