ATA Says CSA 2010 Needs Further Changes Before Release
Despite the fact the American Trucking Associations is not taking part in a dispute to block Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, it is requesting for additional changes before carriers' rankings under the program are publicized. The new system wont be implemented, until at least Dec. 12, by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, as declared by the FMCSA itself.
ATAs manager of safety & security operations, Boyd Stephenson, noted in a Nov. 29 letter to FMCSAs CSA program manager that carriers scores in five of the seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) are ready to be shown to the public. Stephenson said, Before the agency chooses to disclose this data, it should ensure that these BASICs accurately predict crash risk.
Until FMCSA can confirm that the system accurately identifies unsafe carriers in a category, it is inappropriate to make carriers scores in that category publicly available, as they may erroneously label safe, responsible carriers as unsafe, ATA said.
To enhance the connection between BASICs scores and crash risk,
ATA admonishes several steps:
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Adjust severity weights so that they more correctly reflect crash risk;
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Control for risk disparities among generic violations (circumstances where violations of different degrees are lumped together);
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Guarantee industry segments are matched against their peers; and
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Put the system to the test to assure that it precisely identifies carriers that are unsafe.
ATA called to attention several violations, majority in the
Cargo-Related BASIC, where its members have described severity
weights that crucially eclipsed crash risk. On the contrary, there
are some situations possession or under the influence of alcohol
(DUI) less than four hours before driving or insufficient brakes for
safe stopping, for example where the strictness of FMCSA seems
too low.
ATA observed that in establishing its violation severity weightings, a group of agency and state enforcement officials to check the severity weights proposed by its research and attest that those weights fit the pattern to experiences in the field was brought together by FMCSA.
However, in ATAs view, CSA 2010 should be based only upon the statistically demonstrated relationship between violating the FMCSRs and causing a crash, not anecdotal experience and subjective viewpoints, the association said.
The CSA approach itself shows this policy by affirming that violations and severity weights are drawn by employing quantitative analysis to historical crash and roadside violation data to the extent possible. ATA believes that the introduction of subjective viewpoints to the weights distorts the aims of an impartial safety monitoring system.
Albeit ATA announced it would favor that the system be formed solely on the statistical relationship between crash risk and violations, the association explained that if the approach is to include subjective input, it should be from as open-minded and experienced and experienced a sample of individuals as possible. FMCSA was advised by ATA to extend the panel to involve industry representatives.
Regardless of its concerns, ATA is not backing lawsuit to block implementation of CSA or public announcement. It was believed by ATA's counsel that the lawsuit filed Nov. 29 is not going to be fruitful, and the organization said it is convinced that FMCSA remains in favor to work with the industry to make further changes.
Meanwhile, FMCSA told a federal appeals court Nov. 30 that it would not be executing the Safety Measurement System before Dec. 12 and, for that reason, would not be announcing before that date any data that three trucking organizations are seeking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to block. With no objection from the groups appealing to block CSA data release, FMCSA requested for the briefing schedule on the motion for emergency stay to be put on hold for a week.
