The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will research how it could assign blame for truck crashes based on a carrier’s fault, and publish the results of its study in summer 2013, the agency said Monday.
FMCSA’s research plan also revealed that a 2010 agency study found police reports to be a reliable source for determining crash accountability
The agency will study whether police reports from crashes “are a sufficient, consistent and reliable source of information on which to base a weighted crash system,” it said in an outline of its plan and schedule for conducting the research, posted Monday on its website.
It will also study whether assigning crash accountability would allow it to predict a carrier’s risk of future crashes better than the current system, which assigns blame in the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program no matter the carrier’s fault, it said.
This research will also evaluate whether a crash fault system would be worth its cost.