Senior Reporter
FMCSA Announces Changes to CSA Program
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on June 29 announced plans to make several changes to the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program intended to more closely align intervention thresholds of its safety rating categories to crash risk.
The agency said it is lowering its Vehicle Maintenance Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category intervention threshold to “better reflect the seriousness of the crash risk associated with vehicle maintenance issues” and raising the intervention thresholds for the lower-risk controlled substances/alcohol, hazmat compliance and driver ftness BASICs “to more effectively prioritize motor carriers.”
FMCSA said it analyzed the correlation of each BASIC with crash risk and introduced three levels of crash risk correlation:
• High: Unsafe driving, crash indicator, hours-of-service (HOS) compliance
• Medium: Vehicle maintenance
• Low: Controlled substances/alcohol, hazmat compliance and driver fitness
The changes would maintain the current intervention thresholds of 65% for the high-risk BASICs with the strongest relationship to crash risk and reduce the medium risk threshold to 75% from 80%.
Fewer carriers will be identified for interventions in those BASICs where FMCSA proposes to raise the low-risk BASICs threshold to 90% from 80%.
The agency also said it will open the Hazmat Compliance BASIC to public scrutiny, segment cargo tank and noncargo tank carriers within the Hazmat BASIC and increase the maximum vehicle miles traveled used in the utilization factor to 250,000 miles from 200,000 miles to more accurately reflect operations of high-utilization carriers.
FMCSA said it is seeking public comment through July 29 on the changes and expects to begin a preview of the proposed enhancements later in 2015.
Information on the availability of the preview will be made available on the SMS website, and the agency said it will hold several webinars and publish a subsequent Federal Register notice on the changes.
