Court Rejects Challenge to Safety Rating System

A federal appeals court has upheld the federal motor carrier safety ratings system, rejecting trucking’s claims that the process is “arbitrary and capricious” and based on unsound methodology.

In a Feb. 12 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia said the Federal Highway Administration has been reasonable in assigning safety ratings even when it did not give reasons for its decisions. The court said the agency has broad discretion when inspecting motor carriers.

“The bottom line is, the court gave the agency a lot of deference because they perceived this was an issue involving safety,” said Lynda S. Mounts, acting general counsel of the American Trucking Associations’ Litigation Center. “I think we made some strong legal arguments, but I think basically the court gave the agency the benefit of every doubt because of safety.”

Oral arguments in the case were heard Sept. 3.

Safety ratings are one of the indicators used by government inspectors to determine whether a motor carrier is fit for safe operation.

A favorable safety rating can benefit carriers from a marketing standpoint. And in the case of hazardous materials haulers, ratings can make or break a company. Shippers will shy away from chemical haulers and other transporters of dangerous substances who are known to have poor safety scores.

When government agents audit trucking companies, they look at documents that can indicate how many hours-of-service and other violations drivers have committed. The agency uses a scoring system that assigns points for violations. The more points a carrier scores, the lower its safety rating.

In its appeal, ATA argued that inspectors should select records randomly. Permitting FHWA inspectors to do a “focused sampling” of carrier records doesn’t give an overall picture of a motor carrier’s safety posture, ATA said. Therefore, targeting specific records can increase the likelihood that violations will be found.

The court said that since FHWA lacks the resources to conduct a random sampling of every motor carrier, it should be permitted to exercise broad discretion during safety audits and focus its limited resources on likely violations.

In its appeal, trucking also objected to the fact that FHWA failed to justify why it assigns two points for a pattern of hours-of-service violations but only one point for other critical violations, such as driving without a license.

For the full story, see the March 1 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.