ATA urges FMCSA to implement changes to CSA program

The American Trucking Associations recently called on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to be more open in its evaluations of the CSA 2010 compliance program.

ATA supports the government’s initiatives with the program, but points out many issues that need to be improved to more concretely identify future crash risk. The problems include perceived safety risk that can be wrongly concluded from the amount of available data. Insufficient information to assign a percentile rank to 12 percent of carriers and an inefficient system of using three out of seven categories to identify future crash risk were also identified.

The FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee will meet soon to discuss ATA’s improvement recommendations.

“In the spirit of providing a balanced assessment of CSA, we also hope FMCSA honors MCSAC’s request that the subcommittee hear from independent researchers who have studied the relationship between CSA scores and crash risk,” said Rob Abbott, vice president for safety policy at the American Trucking Associations. “Achieving CSA’s goal of reducing crashes, injuries and fatalities is of mutual concern to all stakeholders. Understanding if CSA effectively identifies carriers likely to cause crashes that result in injuries and fatalities should be the first step toward achieving this goal.”

ATA urges FMCSA to implement changes to CSA program

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012