Editorial: Studying Safety
This Editorial appears in the Nov. 18 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
We were relieved to find out last week the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general’s office and the Government Accountability Office are in the process of examining how effective the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is at keeping potentially dangerous fleets and drivers off the nation’s highways.
These ongoing studies took on an even greater importance after the National Transportation Safety Board earlier this month criticized FMCSA’s oversight of motor carrier investigations.
As we report in this issue, the IG will publish an audit next year focusing on the effectiveness of enforcement actions under the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program. Likewise, GAO, the nonpartisan agency that reports to Congress, is reviewing how CSA assesses the potential safety risk posed by motor carriers.
Regardless of anyone’s personal opinion of the CSA program or about the job FMCSA is doing, there should be wide consensus that these studies can help improve the safety of all motorists traveling the nation’s highways.
American Trucking Associations said NTSB’s recommendations were a sign the Obama administration should accelerate efforts to mandate electronic logging devices and improve safety measurement systems.
ATA President Bill Graves said the e-logging mandate will improve hours-of-service compliance. HOS violations were cited by NTSB as one of the “red flags” missed by FMCSA ahead of several deadly truck or bus accidents it investigated.
In the same statement, ATA Chairman Philip Byrd Sr. said NTSB’s concerns also underscored the need for further CSA changes.
“FMCSA must improve its CSA program to better identify carriers more likely to be involved in future crashes,” he said.
Although Administrator Anne Ferro declined comment last week, FMCSA said in a statement that it is “continuously looking for new ways to make our investigation methods even more effective so we shut down unsafe companies before a crash occurs and will thoroughly review the NTSB’s findings.”
There is no question that FMCSA did change the way it conducts investigations in the several years since the CSA program was implemented. And the majority of the trucking industry continues to support CSA, though truckers maintain some aspects of the program need fine-tuning for safety and fairness reasons.
So, all sides should look forward to the release of the reports from the inspector general’s office and GAO. While it is very likely that everyone will agree on all the findings, we hope everyone remembers the ultimate goal — to improve programs like CSA to reduce highway accidents and fatalities, particularly those involving trucks.
