Remedies to CSA’s problems high on industry, government lists

In 2013, you can be assured that the continuing effects of the two-year-old Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program on the trucking industry and commercial drivers will remain high on both the government and industry list of issues demanding attention.

Data inaccuracy, uneven state enforcement practices and untimely uploading of data will plague the CSA program until serious remedies are identified and are accepted by the major stakeholders.

Since the December 2011, nationwide roll-out of CSA, the government has been regularly making refinements to the original program. This was part of the overall Master Plan which anticipated that full-scale deployment would identify issues that did not surface during its limited state pilot testing phase.

DOT also plans to propose in a rulemaking scheduled to be issued for comment later this year to use the safety performance scores on its 7 CSA measures to basically equate to a carrier’s safety “fitness.” DOT is required by law to establish the safety condition of all the carriers within its jurisdiction but has historically been unable to do so because of the sheer number of companies (over 400,000) within its purview and the challenge of performing complete regulatory compliance reviews on each of them.

CSA replaced the old SAFESTAT system, which provided limited performance information and often misidentified carriers as “safe” when a comprehensive compliance review conducted on the same carrier often found otherwise. CSA was born as a way to tap into all the safety data the government maintains on carriers which, in turn, provides a fuller overall and more current picture of a carrier’s operations.  The idea is that instead of a full-blown and time-consuming review of a carrier, its own performance profile earned as a result of roadside inspections, reviews and crash involvement would be accurate enough to reflect the carrier’s overall safety condition. The proposed rule — the Safety Fitness Determination Rule (SFD) — is the final component of the CSA enforcement model.

Since data quality and sufficiency are under assault by the motor carrier industry, DOT has responded with studies of the accuracy of the thousands of police accident reports that underpin the Crash measurement, as well as establishing Task Force reviews to examine how CSA can be improved. It is highly unlikely the rule will be issued until these reviews are completed and the agency has an opportunity to decide its next steps.

Be assured that the DOT is as anxious to improve the quality of the data in order to accurately identify high risk carriers for intervention, as is the industry that wants fairness in the way its safety performance is portrayed. Data and carrier information is the essence of the ability of government to characterize a company’s safety “fitness.” Until that data problem is resolved and action follows to assure users that the data is complete and honest, the CSA program cannot reach the exciting potential its planners and users envisioned. Shippers, brokers, insurers,  as well as the general public need to make competent and informed decisions on the transportation providers they use and need to be able to confidently rely on the  government’s safety measurement system to help them make smart choices.