Jan 102012

Why are there so few safety compliance reviews compared to prior years?

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Tuesday, January 10, 2012  4:04 PM

FMCSA data on safety reviews over the last few years reveals some startling statistics. While it is hard to determine reasons from the data itself, anecdotal evidence suggests troubling conclusions.  The Agency publishes summary data on reviews including Motor Carrier Safety Compliance Reviews and CSA2010 reviews. It is clear that (1) fewer safety reviews are being conducted; (2) vastly more of the reviews are resulting in “Not Rated” findings; and (3) fewer carriers are being rated Satisfactory.

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In 2011, total safety reviews dropped from 15-17 thousand down to 11 thousand. In the first quarter of fiscal 2012 (FY 10/1/11 to 9/30/12) fewer than 2,000 reviews were conducted. With all of the new data FMCSA has to identify carriers requiring intervention, why are we on pace to conduct safety reviews with only half the number of carriers compared to 2008-2010? Even 16,000 annual reviews is an incredibly small number given the size of the trucking industry.

Between 2008 and 2010 only 10-12% of all reviews resulted in Not Rated, but that jumped to 16% in 2011 and is running at 55% YTD. Astonishingly, reviews conducted by federal staff were resulting in only 2% Not Rated and now over half of all federal reviews are resulting in no rating. Finally, while about 60% of all carriers were rated Satisfactory in the 2008-2010 period, that number fell to 48% in 2011 and is on pace for even lower numbers this year.

It is hard to tell from the data why these changes are occurring, but discussions with carriers sheds light on what may be happening. In an effort to show that carriers with high SMS scores have safety problems, investigators are spending much more time at each carrier searching the records with a fine tooth comb to prove that the high score indicates a safety concern. Spending significantly more time at each audit is a plausible explanation for the dramatic decrease in the number of audits. Some Investigators also report being pressured to find violations and stay as long as it takes when they are sent to carriers with high SMS scores. It seems plausible that Investigators are unwilling to give a Satisfactory rating to a carrier with high SMS scores but can’t justify a Conditional rating, so they punt and the carrier ends up Not Rated. While legally, Not Rated is just as good as Satisfactory from the standpoint of a shipper or broker relying on the FMCSA as the sole determinant of a carrier’s fitness for use, from a practical standpoint some shippers and brokers are less likely to use that carrier. I have been advocating that carriers are entitled to due process rather than being mathematically graded on a curve that results in half of all carriers receiving an F (or at least our industry’s modern equivalent of a scarlet letter - a golden triangle). When the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury are all the same entity we have to be very carful about potential abuse of power.

There is not enough evidence to suggest that the FMCSA is cooking the books to make CSA/SMS a self-fulfilling prophesy, but both the numbers and the anecdotes are troubling. I welcome carriers reading this post to weigh in and let us know if you have experienced bias in Compliance Reviews or significantly longer reviews than in past years. I will certainly understand if you choose to contribute your thoughts anonymously.

If someone has a less ominous interpretation of the numbers, please enlighten me.


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Categories: CSA 2010
Jan 052012

Inbound Logistics publishes CSA article

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Thursday, January 05, 2012  5:53 PM

Here is a link to an article written by me that was published in the December issue of Inbound Logistics. In the article I point out numerous flaws in the SMS methodology. Shippers and brokers need to be aware of the problems and not accept the current SMS methodology as a fait accompli. Just as with hours of service, it is very important that we engage with our Congressional officials to make sure they understand that this flawed regulation does nothing to improve safety while also harming small businesses (carriers) and driving up the cost of doing business.


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Categories: CSA 2010
Jan 042012

Key safety panel questions validity of CSA/SMS scores as crash predictor

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Wednesday, January 04, 2012  8:17 AM

The Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee is recommending that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) collect more data to ensure that the Safety Measurement System (SMS) is based on science and not on the intuition or opinion of experts. Read more about this in Transport Topics. The committee reported that it did not have sufficient data to conclude that CSA/SMS scores are related to crash probability. Committee member Rob Abbott, vice president of safety policy for the ATA said “Really, they reflect sort of guesses at the relationship between violations and crashes in terms of severity. We really need to look at the data that shows a causal relationship.”

We know from the fine work done by Wells Fargo that there is no relationship between SMS scores and accidents per million miles.


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Categories: CSA 2010
Dec 082011

SMS data shows serious flaws in methodology

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Thursday, December 08, 2011  10:48 AM

We have been analyzing CSA/SMS data posted on the FMCSA web site and have found some interesting and disturbing results that cast significant doubts on the effectiveness of the SMS methodology. First, the data is incomplete. Only 12% of all carriers are even measured by the system. There are about 770,000 carriers in the FMCSA downloadable SMS results. Of those, only 325,000 have even had a recorded inspection in the last two years or only 42% of carriers. Several inspections are required before an SMS score or percentage is reported and only 92,000 carriers have even a single score on one of the five publicly available BASICs. So 92,000 out of 770,000 carriers are being measured by the system. That is a paltry 12%. What about the other 88%?

Second, and more important, the SMS methodology indicates that over half of all measured carriers have scores above the intervention threshold on at least one BASIC. To suggest that over half of the available carriers have some deficiency in safety is absurd and flies in the face of the data showing the dramatic reduction in trucking accidents and fatalities per million miles. Over 51,000 of the 92,000 measured carriers have a score that exceeds the arbitrary thresholds established by the FMCSA. The agency is, at best, disingenuous in its claims that a much smaller percentage of carriers exceed the FMCSA limbo bars. They are comparing the 51,000 “golden triangle” carriers to a total of 500,000 or so carriers.

Finally, and most important, we know from the fine work of Anthony Gallo at Wells Fargo that there is no correlation between BASIC scores and accidents per million miles.

Shippers and brokers should not be using this flawed system to select carriers. The FMCSA needs to change its approach before many small businesses (carriers) are damaged or destroyed.

If you want to support my efforts to get sensible changes to CSA/SMS, starting with removal of SMS scores from the FMCS web site, please visit ASECTT and indicate your support for my letter to Congress.


Comments:  (2)
Categories: CSA 2010
Nov 112011

CSA BASIC scores have no relationship to carrier accident frequency

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Friday, November 11, 2011  1:20 PM

Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Anthony Gallo published his second excellent analysis of CSA proving with the FMCSA’s own data that there is little or no correlation between CSA BASIC scores and motor carrier accidents. You can contract me or contact Anthony directly at anthony.gallo@wellsfargo.com for the full document, but I want to highlight a couple of key points. Wells Fargo analyzed data for 200 large carriers comparing accidents per million miles and accidents per power unit to 3 key BASIC scores. Accidents may not be the best measure of a carrier’s safety since there is no indication of who was at fault in the accident or the severity of the accident, but one would still expect that carriers with few accidents are generally very safety conscious in their driver and equipment management strategies.

The analysis shows little or no correlation between the CSA BASIC scores for Unsafe Driving, Fatigued Driving, and Driver Fitness and accidents per million miles or accidents per power unit. Everyone wants to see continued reductions in truck-related accidents, and I am sure nobody is going to speak out in favor of “unsafe drivers” or “fatigued drivers”. It appears though, that the key CSA measures that would indicate a carrier should be a candidate for further scrutiny bear no relationship to the actual safety performance of those carriers. This is one of numerous reasons that shippers and brokers should not be using CSA data to create their own carrier credentialing methodologies.

The first graph shows the low correlation between the Unsafe Driving BASIC and accidents per million miles.

WF Unsafe driving BASIC

The Unsafe Driving BASIC r-squared of .042 means that the score accounts for 4.2% of the variance in the accidents per million miles. In plain English, the score bears no relationship to accident history. Carriers with very high (bad) Unsafe Driving scores may have very low accident rates or may have higher accident rates. Similarly, carriers with very low (good)Unsafe Driving scores may have high or low accident rates.

The second graph shows the correlation between Fatigued Driving and accidents per million miles. There is even less correlation for this basic. There is virtually no relationship between the BASIC score and accidents per million miles.

WF Fatigued driver BASIC

Finally, the graph for Driver Fitness, while showing a slightly better correlation, has an r-squared of .055, indicating again that there is almost no relationship between the BASIC score and accident history.

WF Driver fitness BASIC

If you are a shipper or broker and are using CSA scores to decide which carriers to use, you should stop immediately. You are doing nothing to improve safety on our highways. You are harming small businesses in our country by denying freight to carriers that are authorized by the federal government to operate in interstate trucking. You are harming your own bottom line by failing to use carriers that provide the right combination of rates and service to meet your needs. You are harming our industry by potentially putting out of business perfectly good carriers at a time when we are on the precipice of a significant capacity shortage.


Comments:  (2)
Categories: CSA 2010
Aug 192011

Making sense of CSA can sometimes be an impossible mission

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Friday, August 19, 2011  5:32 PM

Highway safety is no laughing matter and some of the unintended consequences of CSA are more likely to induce tears of frustration rather than tears of joy. However, we can all still enjoy a clever and humorous critique of CSA. Bill Bierman, an attorney at Nowell, Amoroso, Klein, Bierman, P.A. has produced just what we need. Please enjoy this video, courtesy of our good friend Bill Bierman.


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Categories: CSA 2010
Aug 032011

ATA speaks out in favor of FMCSA expansion to regulate shippers and brokers

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Wednesday, August 03, 2011  4:55 PM

It is very disappointing to see the American Trucking Associations (ATA) speak out in favor of greater regulatory power for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. In the ATA's official response to the FMCSA 5-year plan, the ATA commended the FMCSA for acknowledging that "The greatest potential for creating the safest CMV industry lies in focusing outreach, oversight, and enforcement resources on the entire CMV transportation life-cycle." In case you lack the decoder ring to decipher the ATA's message, the FMCSA is seeking to regulate both shippers and brokers, and the ATA appears to be in favor of expanding the government's regulatory and bureaucratic reach. The release notes that the ATA is "likely to support FMCSA's future efforts to obtain this authority to enforce against other entities …"

The proposed expansion of FMCSA's oversight to cover shippers and brokers is not only ill-defined in the 5-year plan, but is unauthorized under current law. The Agency's goal of establishing "strong enforcement strategies and sanctions" extending even to shippers and brokers suggests that the Agency thinks vicarious liability is a good thing and should be imposed on shippers and brokers by regulation. The FMCSA should concentrate its limited resources on improving the effectiveness and fairness of the motor carrier safety oversight it is currently authorized to exercise.

I was fortunate to come into the transportation industry in 1980, the year the motor carrier industry broke free of the shackles of over-burdensome government regulation. The ensuing decades saw tremendous innovations in equipment, intermodal services, and operating strategies. Great and highly profitable companies emerged and thrived under free enterprise. Productivity gains kept costs low while competition resulted in tremendous improvements in service levels. All the while, highway safety improved at a tremendous rate thanks to the hard efforts of the trucking industry.

In a time where our country is debating the merits of big government solutions versus the free enterprise system that made our country great, it is disheartening in our own industry to hear participants clamoring for increased government regulation.

 


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Categories: CSA 2010
May 172011

Key CSA scores may be poor indicators of carrier safety

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Tuesday, May 17, 2011  4:04 PM

Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Anthony Gallo published an excellent document on March 28 highlighting critical problems with CSA 2010. You can contract me or contact Anthony directly at anthony.gallo@wellsfargo.com for the full document, but I want to highlight a couple of key points. The analysis shows little or no correlation between the CSA BASIC scores for unsafe driving and fatigued driving and accidents per million miles. Everyone wants to see continued reductions in truck-related accidents. It appears though, that the key CSA measures that would indicate a carrier should be a candidate for further scrutiny, bear no relationship to the actual safety ratings of those carriers. This is one of numerous reasons that shippers should not be using CSA data to create their own carrier credentialing methodologies. Here is an excerpt from the Wells Fargo publication.

FMCSA assigns a composite score in seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) along with a corresponding "limit" threshold. When a carrier breaches the threshold corrective actions must be taken to remedy the violations. Serious or persistent violations can result in enforcement actions against either the driver or carrier. Motor carriers initially receive a "warning letter" informing them of their violations. According to several reports as many as 50,000 letters were expected to be sent in Hi 2011.

When we dissected the underlying data in relation to the composite scores, we were somewhat surprised to see that there was little correlation between the scores and the actual number of accidents and injuries/fatalities. Specifically, we observed little correlation between poor scores in the Unsafe Drivers and Fatigued Drivers categories and the actual number of accidents or injuries/fatalities. Further, we could not find and are not aware of FMCSA data that statistically demonstrates a correlation behind these factors and accidents. Certainly it is intuitive that "unsafe drivers" and "fatigued drivers" should be more prone to accidents. However, this does not appear to be the case. We feel this may be due, in part, to the methodology by which the categories are scored. For example, unfavorable Fatigued Drivers scores typically result from Hours of Service violations, but also include Logbook violations and errors. So while a fatigued/tired driver (assumed to be tired if outside of HOS criteria) may indeed be more likely to be involved in an accident, one with Logbook errors would perhaps not be. Thus, if an unfavorable Fatigued Driver score is in fact being driven by Logbook errors, the composite score would be less likely to correlate with accidents, in our view.

We understand the Unsafe Drivers/Driving category is meant to capture speeding, reckless driving, improper lane changes, etc. Certainly we think these behaviors should be captured and likely have some correlation with accidents. However, there are literally dozens of subcategories within the Unsafe Driving category, and a severity weight is given to each violation subcategory. This may help explain some of the disconnect between the scores and the actual number of accidents. For example, "reckless driving" and "texting while driving" both carry 10 point weights. Conversely, "failure to use a seatbelt" has a 7 weight whereas "improper lane change" and "following too close" each carry a 5 weight, although intuitively the latter two appear to be less safe activities, in our view.


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Categories: CSA 2010
Mar 102011

FMCSA press release on CSA reduces shipper and 3PL carrier selection risk

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Thursday, March 10, 2011  9:28 AM

 

FMCSA Reaches Settlement Agreement in National Association of Small Trucking Companies Litigation on the Compliance Safety Accountability Program

 

Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) today announced it has reached a settlement agreement with three trucking associations that will end litigation over information published on the website of FMCSA's motor carrier enforcement program, Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA).

"CSA is a safety-critical program that helps to reduce commercial motor vehicle-related crashes and save lives," said FMCSA Administrator Anne S. Ferro. "Through this settlement agreement, we addressed the concerns raised by petitioners without compromising the CSA program and its safety benefits."

The National Association of Small Trucking Companies, Inc. (NASTC), the Expedite Alliance of North America (TEANA) and the Air & Expedited Motor Carriers Association (AEMCA) filed suit on Nov. 29, 2010 challenging FMCSA's CSA program. Under the agreement, FMCSA will make changes to CSA's Safety Measurement System (SMS) public website to address concerns regarding the display of information on a commercial motor carriers' safety performance.

The key changes that FMCSA will make to the SMS public website by March 25, 2011 are as follows:

  • Replace any ALERT symbol currently displayed in orange on the SMS website with the following symbol of the exclamation mark inside a yellow triangle  CSA flag.png

 

  • Revise the disclaimer language on the SMS website to read:
  • "The data in the Safety Measurement System (SMS) is performance data used by the Agency and enforcement community. A   CSA flag.png

    symbol, based on that data, indicates that FMCSA may prioritize a motor carrier for further monitoring. The CSA flag.pngsymbol is not intended to imply any federal safety rating of the carrier pursuant to 49 USC 31144. Readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition simply based on the data displayed in this system. Unless a motor carrier in the SMS has received an UNSATISFACTORY safety rating pursuant to 49 CFR Part 385, or has otherwise been ordered to discontinue operations by the FMCSA, it is authorized to operate on the nation's roadways. Motor carrier safety ratings are available at http://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov and motor carrier licensing and insurance status are available at http://li-public.fmcsa.dot.gov."

 

On Dec. 13, 2010, FMCSA launched its CSA enforcement program that is used to analyze all safety-based violations from roadside inspections and crashes to measure a commercial motor carrier's on-road safety performance. CSA allows FMCSA to reach more carriers earlier and deploy a range of corrective interventions to address a carrier's specific safety problems before crashes can occur.

To learn more about the CSA settlement agreement, visit the CSA website at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/.


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Categories: CSA 2010
Feb 072011

Make your voice heard about CSA 2010 deficiencies

Posted By: Tom Sanderson
Date Posted:  Monday, February 07, 2011  11:14 AM

I urge you to write to Anne Ferro, the Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, regarding critical shortcomings with the new CSA 2010 program. It is essential that shippers speak out to avoid needless potential liability under the new regulations. Carriers are making their voices heard but their interests are not always perfectly aligned with shipper and 3PL interests. I have attached the letter I sent to Ms. Ferro. Please feel free to copy it in whole or edit the content to personalize it to your company.

It is not too late to turn CSA 2010 into a positive force for truck safety without simultaneously opening the floodgates of vicarious liability lawsuits. Vicarious liability as it applies to interstate trucking is the argument that pursuant to state law the users of a motor carrier licensed and authorized and insured pursuant to federal regulation should nonetheless be liable for the carrier's negligence in a highway accident for negligent selection or use of the carrier.

Equally important, I advise that you not develop your own methodology to evaluate whether a carrier is fit for service based on the CSA scores. As a shipper, you are entitled to rely on the FMCSA to certify carriers as safe for use. The Agency has a statutory duty to determine the fitness of motor carriers to operate safely on the public highways. The FMCSA has not followed the legally required process for changing its current system of rating carriers as unsatisfactory, conditional, or satisfactory and unrated (which is the equivalent of satisfactory). If the Agency, in doing its duty, certifies a carrier as safe to operate and an insurance company, after investigating it, provides evidence of adequate coverage, is the shipping community well served to second guess those decisions? The case law clearly suggests that you lose your statutory protection of reliance on the regulator's ultimate decision when you use flawed data like CSA 2010 to credential carriers. You only open Pandora's Box by deciding, for example, that one "Alert" is OK but not two, or by establishing your own minimum percentiles. You are needlessly exposing yourself to vicarious liability claims where your chosen credentialing criteria are challenged.

Before you use CSA 2010 methodology, consider this. The FMCSA, in discharging its duty, places approximately 1% of the carriers it certifies out of service each year. Yet under CSA 2010, 57% of the carriers that the system measures will be over a specified threshold and hence subject to being blackballed if the 5 reported BASICs are used as credentialing criteria.

 

Anne S. Ferro, Administrator

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

United States Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Avenue SE

Washington, DC 20590

 

Dear Ms. Ferro,

I am writing to express my concerns about certain aspects of the new CSA 2010 program. While I applaud the Agency's efforts to make our highways safer for all, the CSA program is needlessly subjecting manufacturers, retailers, and logistics management companies (Shippers) to legal claims of vicarious liability and negligent entrustment when they are using carriers that the FMCSA has deemed as fit for service.

Shippers and brokers are now being bombarded by consultants offering to help them develop their own methodology for credentialing carriers using the SMS scores for the five reported BASICs. Shippers are entitled to rely on the FMCSA to certify carriers as safe for use. The Agency cannot change its statutory duty to determine the fitness of motor carriers to operate safely on the public highways. The FMCSA has not followed the legally required process for changing its current system of rating carriers as unsatisfactory, conditional, or satisfactory and unrated (which is the equivalent of satisfactory). If the Agency, in doing its duty, certifies a carrier as safe to operate and an insurance company, after investigating it, provides evidence of adequate coverage, is the shipping community well served to second guess those decisions? The case law clearly suggests that shippers lose their statutory protection of reliance on the regulator's ultimate decision when they use data like CSA 2010 to credential the carriers they use.

Furthermore, some large carriers are asking shippers to adopt a carrier credentialing methodology based on the CSA data. With 57% of all carriers having at least one Alert, the large carriers are trying to scare shippers into abandoning the smaller carriers that are the lifeblood of the trucking industry. The self interest in reducing competition is obvious.

I am requesting that Agency publish a clear disclaimer and warning regarding the CSA data; specifically: "Data accumulated for use by the Agency in prioritizing carriers for further safety monitoring is intended solely for the use of the Agency and is not intended for use by the shipping and receiving public to establish criteria for use of carriers. In addition, it is improper to use such data for any purpose in court or other legal proceedings, except for use by the Agency in fulfilling its obligation to ultimately determine which carriers are authorized to conduct interstate operations. Until addressed in rulemaking, the Agency's determination of carriers shall be reflected as "unsatisfactory," "conditional," "satisfactory," and "unrated." Unrated carriers are fully licensed, authorized and insured in accordance with FMCSA regulations."

 

Thank you for your consideration,

 

 

Thomas K. Sanderson

President and CEO

Transplace


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Categories: CSA 2010
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