Opinion: Remove SafeStat From Public View
b>By Jeff Tucker
i>Chief Executive Officer, Tucker Co.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s rating system for carriers, SafeStat, must be removed from public access immediately and permanently, along with its subset of four Safety Evaluation Area scores and related Inspection Selection System scores.
Transport Topics reported in May that FMCSA intends to change the formula it uses to run SafeStat — more formally known as the Safety Status Measurement System. (Click here for previous coverage.)Well, alleluia to that — considering that the Department of Transportation found that about 90% of the carriers dubbed “at risk” under SafeStat were not high risk.
Could transport users like us now please go back to relying on traditional Department of Transportation safety ratings?
For some time now, the overall score has been disabled on FMCSA’s Web site because one of its four subsets of SEA scores has been temporarily removed. But the other three SEA scores are active and visible to the public.
To quote that site, “SafeStat uses available federal motor carrier safety data to measure the relative safety status of motor carriers in four safety evaluation areas: accident, driver, vehicle and safety management.” The scores reflect internal algorithms FMCSA developed and which they and law enforcement officials use to suggest which motor carrier may need inspection or further review.
Incredibly, many thousands of carriers can have a “satisfactory” DOT safety rating and “fail” FMCSA’s litmus test.
FMCSA’s Web site has a whole page warning viewers how to use the data and suggesting that any use other than by FMCSA or law enforcement officials “may produce unintended results and not be suitable for certain uses.” On the other hand, FMCSA insists that it should report this data to the public. They argue that some information is better than nothing.
They’re dead wrong.
SafeStat and its underlying data are flawed and often out of date. SafeStat’s collection of data is designed to be understood by law enforcement only. And despite FMCSA’s warning not to read too much into the collected data, negative effects on commerce have already been reported, particularly in the realm of insurance and liability. By making the accumulated data available to the public, FMCSA has affected the ability of shippers, brokers and probably carriers to purchase basic insurance coverage.
SafeStat and its SEA scores are causing unprecedented
ultimillion-dollar negligent hiring judgments against shippers and brokers in bodily injury/death lawsuits.
In Schramm v. Foster, a broker contracted with a carrier to haul cargo for a shipper. The carrier was unrated by DOT, had a
afeStat score within FMCSA’s norm and an existing business relationship with the broker. The plaintiff’s attorney focused on negligent entrustment and SafeStat data, arguing that while the carrier was within the norms, it was close enough to SafeStat’s internal margin of acceptability that the broker was required to do more research.
In Puckrein v. ATI Transport in May, the court went even further. This court found the shipper (no broker was involved) potentially liable for highway deaths occurring as a result of an accident involving a carrier it hired, stating, “Even if it could be proved that [the shipper] made reasonable inquiry of [the carrier] at the time of its original retention, its duty did not end there.” So, just where does its duty end?
Thanks to FMCSA, clever plaintiff’s attorneys and an unenlightened judicial process, unprecedented lawsuits are raining down, using SafeStat data in exactly the manner FMCSA warns the public against. These decisions ricochet through the insurance industry like a pinball, to the point that many insurance underwriters will no longer provide auto liability for “nonowned” autos and “hired autos” to anyone in the transportation industry for fear of a similar lawsuit and exposure.
We have heard firsthand stories of insurance firms seeking to cancel nonowned endorsements halfway through a policy year. A negligent-hiring lawsuit involving bodily injury and/or death could easily and wrongfully bankrupt a shipper, broker or carrier — especially if the insurance industry won’t cover the exposure.
At a recent trade association meeting, one expert gave a presentation on SafeStat and its underlying SEA scores, revealing, among other interesting things, that SafeStat scores tend to be higher for truckload carriers than for less-than-truckload, as the algorithms seem to favor the LTL carrier operations. The presenter also said that about 60% of the approximately 10,000 challenges by carriers to FMCSA for wrong data were successful.
aking it to the extreme, might we conclude that the 25% of the nation’s motor carriers with satisfactory DOT safety ratings who have at least one high SEA score should be avoided? That’s absolute nonsense, but some firms are actually considering this to protect themselves.
The educated, highly trained shippers, freight brokers, 3PLs and carriers who are the preeminent users of transportation infrastructure can neither trust nor interpret these scores. Instead, these users are being held hostage and being harmed by the visibility of these scores.
Until SafeStat, SEA and ISS scores are removed from public sight, plaintiff attorneys and judges will wrongfully hold industry accountable for negligence in death and bodily injury suits based on the data, and upward of 25% to 30% of the nation’s carriers will be needlessly brought to their knees.
Tucker Co., Cherry Hill, N.J., is a third-generation family-run firm that provides logistics services for commercial shippers.
This opinion piece appears in the June 26 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
