FMCSA Should Slow Some CSA Score Releases Until Data Woes Are Fixed, Advisory Panel Says

This story appears in the April 22 print edition of Transport Topics.

LAS VEGAS — A Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration advisory subcommittee has recommended withholding from public view at least three safety score categories that are part of its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program until underlying data problems are corrected.

The announcement was made here at the Transportation Intermediaries Association annual meeting by two members of the subcommittee’s 19-member panel appointed by FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro last year.

“The attention CSA has brought to the industry has been healthy,” Robert Petrancosta, vice president of safety for Con-way Freight and a member of the CSA subcommittee, told meeting participants. “But make no mistake, there are some problems.”

The subcommittee recommended that the Controlled Substance/Alcohol and Driver Fitness scoring sections of CSA’s Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) become private.

And while it also recommended that the Hazardous Materials Compliance scoring section remain private, agency officials have said the section could become public before the end of the year.

In addition, the subcommittee said FMCSA should require only crashes that are fatal or cause serious injuries to be recorded in a Department of Transportation database but that the crash data be excluded from carriers’ Crash Indicator score if the carrier was not at fault.

The subcommittee — composed of representatives from transportation firms, safety interest groups and trade associations — began its review in October. It is part of the Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, a permanent advisory panel of FMCSA.

The recommendations “provide a very important perspective on our CSA program,” said FMCSA spokesman Duane DeBruyne. “We will carefully consider their recommendations as we move forward and continue to welcome feedback on CSA from all interested parties.”

Petrancosta said making the scores private would not prevent law enforcement and FMCSA officials from viewing them.

“What would change would be the influence the shipping community has had, and does have today,” Petrancosta told Transport Topics. “They wouldn’t be making judgments for business reasons based on the scores.”

Shippers would likely be forced to call carriers and ask for the scores, allowing carriers to discuss them more in depth and provide context, Petrancosta said.

Jeff Tucker, a subcommittee member and CEO of Tucker Co. Worldwide, said even top FMCSA officials seem unable to support the notion that the data itself distinguishes a safe carrier from one that is unsafe.

“I believe the program’s safety improvement is dubious at best,” Tucker said. “But I’m a believer that CSA is a good program that can improve.”

Petrancosta was also skeptical of the CSA scoring system because of its failure to accurately predict a carrier’s risk of crashes. “If the CSA mission is to identify carriers in greater risk of future crashes, then I would argue that one of the things we need to work on is accountability,” he said.

“There’s a big difference in being involved in a crash and behavior that actually caused that crash,” Petrancosta added.

FMCSA officials have called the CSA program, launched in December 2010 to improve commercial truck and bus safety, a “work in progress.” Since then, its safety scoring system has been tweaked several times.

It was designed to replace the SafeStat program that combined current and historical safety performance information to measure the safety fitness of carriers. Many fleets questioned the accuracy of SafeStat scores.

The other public BASIC sections include Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service Compliance, and Vehicle Maintenance.

During the conference, TIA released its 2013 Carrier Selection Framework, a 50-page document that concluded “much evidence suggests that BASIC scores are almost entirely useless” as a tool to distinguish which carriers are safe and which are risky.

“In sum, no clear evidence exists to support the view that a motor carrier’s BASIC scores will (or even can) indicate whether that particular motor carrier is more or less likely than any other carrier to be involved in a crash, collision, accident or injury,” the document said.

The document also said that legal trouble could be ahead for those using BASIC scores to hire carriers.

Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for American Trucking Associations, said ATA supports the subcommittee’s recommendations.

“We agree with the subcommittee’s conclusions that FMCSA’s first option should be to withhold CSA scores from public view. The analysis and presentations reviewed by the committee demonstrated there are many data and methodology problems that substantially impact the reliability of CSA scores,” he said.

 Abbott said ATA also was pleased that the subcommittee concluded that when there is a clear determination that a carrier was not at fault, a crash should not be used to calculate the involved carrier’s Crash Indicator score.

“We know this is common sense, but also know there are some who would prefer to continue to count these crashes against carriers in the system,” Abbott added.