Industry Pushes CSA Changes But Voices Support for Program

This story appears in the Oct. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

LAS VEGAS — The trucking industry continued its public push to get federal regulators to make significant changes to the government’s new safety program, as fleet officials praised the program’s intentions and blasted some of its provisions here.

While many speakers and attendees during American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition here said they continued to support the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, they also sharply criticized aspects of the program they say are unfair or ineffective.

Many officials expressed an urgency in correcting issues, such as assigning accountability for crashes and a perceived disconnect between some scores and carriers’ safety.

“We still believe that CSA is fundamentally the program that will help make travel on the nation’s highways safer,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a speech. “But it must be implemented and managed in such a way as to instill confidence within the industry that our buy-in to the program will make our companies stronger and not be penalized by inaccurate data or misrepresentation by the shipping community or the media.”

Meanwhile, Robert Low, chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association, said his group “remains generally supportive” of CSA, but agrees “there are some flaws” that TCA is also working with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to fix.

Low, president of Prime Inc., said he opposes the notion the entire safety program should be scrapped, as advocated by some smaller fleets and some brokers. He criticized those opponents, saying, it appears that “for the sake of financial gain, some may be willing to sacrifice safety on the nation’s highways.”

Attendees’ opinions on CSA largely reflected the growing frustration ATA and other industry groups have expressed. ATA in May gathered its top issues with CSA into a call to FMCSA to fix such things as the crash accountability program, unreliable fleet safety scoring, and whether dismissed or not-guilty accusations ought to affect scores.

Along the same lines, trucking companies identified CSA as their top concern this year, according to a survey released during MCE by the American Transportation Research Institute (see story, p. 4).

“We’ve all read and understand FMCSA’s admirable CSA goals,” Graves said. “But several studies conducted this year, including ATRI’s latest study . . . have found that CSA still has some serious flaws and is not working as well as we’d hoped.”

Graves was referring to a study ATRI released the prior week finding that two of the Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories — or BASICs — were negatively related to crash risk, and that carriers with worse scores in those BASICs actually had lower crash rates than their peers.

Graves warned that CSA may become a system for measuring regulatory compliance instead of carrier safety if FMCSA did not make changes ATA has recommended.

ATA invited a top FMCSA official to its meeting to defend the program.

“CSA, to me, is good,” said Jack Van Steenburg, FMCSA’s chief safety officer. But, he added, “We can do better.”

While defending the program overall, Van Steenburg recognized some of the program’s weaknesses identified by the industry, while promising to work to solve them.

Violations in roadside inspections decreased 8% in 2011 over 2010, the largest decrease on record, he said, crediting CSA for much of the reduction. Driver-specific violations dropped by 10%.

“Like any good program, we want to improve on it and improve on it, and we plan on doing that. We’re listening to what the industry is saying, we’re listening to what the safety advocates are saying, we’re listening to what the enforcement people are saying. But I personally think it’s working and we’re focusing on the right carriers,” he said.

At a session focusing on studies that have faulted CSA, Van Steenburg reminded attendees that the agency is studying how it could implement a crash accountability program.

FMCSA also is considering whether it should remove violations from carrier records if the underlying accusation was dismissed in court or if the carrier or driver was found not guilty. Currently, states can use their discretion in considering such requests.

During the meeting, many officials shared their opinions on CSA.

John Conley, past president of National Tank Truck Carriers, called the current situation with CSA “birthing pains.”

Steve Niswander of Groendyke Transport said that hazmat carriers generally had better-qualified drivers than other market sectors, but that CSA’s focus on hazardous materials has placed an unfair burden on carriers that move it.

“I believe it’s a good thing, but it needs to be fixed,” said Ray Kuntz, owner of Watkins & Shepard Trucking Inc., Helena, Mont. Kuntz was ATA’s chairman from 2007-2008.

Kuntz sees some parts of CSA as unfair, including the policy of assigning the same penalty to carriers for crashes, regardless of whether the carrier was at fault. A Watkins & Shepard truck was recently hit head-on by a drunken driver, and Kuntz thought it was “obvious” that his company should not be blamed for it.

“The only thing we’re guilty of is being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

“The safety premise of CSA is absolutely on point, but some of the provisions must be amended,” said Ronald Chipman, vice president of risk management at Watkins Associated Industries, which owns six trucking companies.

Managing Editor Neil Abt and Associate News Editor Jonathan S. Reiskin contributed to this story.