Lawmakers Urge FMCSA Chief to Delay Safety Fitness Determination Rulemaking
A group of U.S. House lawmakers are urging the nation’s top trucking regulator to delay a rulemaking on a safety fitness determination proposal.
The 36 lawmakers wrote Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Acting Administrator Scott Darling on May 4 to convince him not to proceed with the proposed rulemaking until the agency concludes a congressionally mandated review of a safety performance scoring program.
A 2015 highway law, called the FAST Act, requires FMCSA to move forward with reform to its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.
“Common sense dictates that FMCSA should complete the reforms to the CSA/SMS system before proceeding to a new method of evaluating safety fitness of carriers,” they wrote. “Incorporating misleading safety data and analysis into a new safety fitness determination will not provide the desired safety to the traveling public.” SMS stands for safety measurement system, which is the program’s methodology.
FMCSA extended through May 23 the window for which the public may comment on its safety fitness determination proposed rule. The rule would use data from agency and roadside inspections and investigations for the purpose of evaluating monthly if a carrier is fit to operate.
Segments of the trucking industry, led by American Trucking Associations, have criticized the accuracy of CSA scores.
“Though ATA supports the use of real-time, on-road performance data for assigning safety fitness determinations (a.k.a. safety ratings), the organization is opposed to the use of CSA data in its current form for this purpose,” said Rob Abbott, ATA's vice president of safety policy. “Congress has appropriately required a deeper look at ways to make the data more reliable for measuring individual fleet safety performance. Until this step is completed and the system improved, it is inappropriate for FMCSA to move forward with its proposal.”
