Crashes and interventions: The fault handicap

The trucking industry has complained about the unfairness of the lack of crash accountability in determining what crashes contribute to carriers’ Compliance, Safety, Accountability profiles since CSA Safety Measurement System data became publicly available in non-crash categories in large part two and a half years ago. Though the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will report later this year on its in-depth study of potential ways to account for crash fault, drivers and carriers still have to live with a system that virtually can blacklist them for business and increase insurance premiums, at no fault of their own.

Though the agency still keeps carriers’ Crash Indicator BASIC (Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement) percentile rankings hidden from public view, crash details are in fact available one click away from carriers’ main CSA profiles. Many industry watchers and participants view the presentation of such information in the safety-ranking context of the CSA program as the No. 1 problem the system presents for carriers. Among Overdrive readers polled earlier this year on CSA, 12 percent of respondents named the lack of crash accountability as their biggest problem with the system; it ranked third in a list of 10 problems, behind only a perceived deterioration in the driver-law enforcement relationship, and due process issues with the DataQs challenge process.

By divorcing fault from the presentation of crash information, critics say, FMCSA is doing a grave disservice to members of the public, the motor carriers the agency oversees and their drivers.

FMCSA, however, continues to insist that the Crash Indicator is its best predictor of crashes (see video at bottom for the agency’s own CSA effectiveness analysis), and that if it can prove that the CSA SMS effectively identifies unsafe motor carriers, it can help the agency prioritize where to focus its investigative resources.

“Data shows you’re likely to have more crashes if you have high scores” in the Crash Indicator as well as several other BASICs, says Bill Quade, FMCSA associate administrator for enforcement.

At a February meeting of the CSA Subcommittee to FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, Quade compared carriers involved in crashes to people who smoke. “Data shows that people who smoke are more likely to get cancer, but some people smoke three packs a day and never get cancer,” he said.

If many industry watchers are right, the anomalies may be less the exception than the rule regarding crash involvement. “CSA will never be tied to crash predictability,” says David Saunders, chief executive officer of Texas-headquartered Compliance Safety Systems, “The scientific data doesn’t exist.”