Editorial: Doing the Right Thing on SafeStat

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he Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Department of Transportation have done the right thing and decided not to repost the safety scores of motor carriers on the Internet, at least not until after seeing the results of two new investigations into critics’ claims that its SafeStat program is still flawed.

We at American Trucking Associations are, of course, among SafeStat’s biggest critics, since we don’t believe the program accurately identifies carriers whose safety records need further scrutiny, often bringing unnecessary attention to well-functioning fleets and masking problems at troubled ones.

When FMCSA said in mid-March that it was planning to restart the SafeStat postings within a few weeks, ATA President Bill Graves wrote DOT Secretary Norman Mineta of the group’s “serious and continuing concerns.”

The agency had shut down the SafeStat postings in 2004 after much criticism of the system’s accuracy, led by findings from DOT’s own inspector general, who found the program’s information to be incomplete, out-of-date and misleading.

In March, FMCSA said it had worked out the kinks and was ready to reactivate the program — which is designed to give shippers a way to judge a carrier’s safety record and to help the agency target which fleets need additional scrutiny.

After ATA and others complained, Mineta, who left his post on July 7, said DOT asked the inspector general to re-examine SafeStat and asked the Government Accountability Office to look it over as well.

In his comments to Mineta, Graves had specifically stated that accidents were still being significantly underreported by various state agencies, which skewed the SafeStat results. ATA also questioned the reliability of the algorithm FMCSA uses to determine which carriers are having safety issues.

While FMCSA officials in March said they were planning to examine the algorithm issue in the future, Graves told Mineta, “ATA believes FMCSA may be missing an opportunity for significant improvement in the model” by not fixing it now, while the program is already suspended.

Thanks to former Secretary Mineta for seeing the logic in further examination of SafeStat before resuming the program in public. We believe that in doing so he improved the chances that SafeStat will one day be an accurate and reliable indicator of fleet safety records.

We would also like to suggest to Mineta’s successor that any proposed modifications to SafeStat and the safety algorithm be unveiled publicly so that we and other interested parties can comment before they are implemented.

This editorial appears in the July 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.