Feeling the heat

Carrier tests reveal what’s coming under the far-reaching CSA 2010 safety crackdown.

As the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program goes live nationwide in July, it will increase the agency’s attention to owner-operator safety.

The new model changes safety monitoring and enforcement in ways that will reach deep into your shipper and carrier relationships, not to mention their potential to affect your hours of service compliance practices and your view of roadside inspections.

Independent owner-operators will find it necessary to ramp up attention to operational details such as log book precision, equipment condition and medical certificates. Leased drivers in the CSA 2010 pilot states and elsewhere have already seen new penalties coming from their carriers for violations as minor as a speeding warning.

CSA 2010 does many things differently from Safestat, the old system that scored carriers’ safety performance. For one, it casts a wider net for including violations in the safety scoring system, rather than just out-of-service violations, tickets and crashes.