Ten trucking trade groups have penned a letter to the DOT pleading for the public scores in the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program be removed from public view, pointing to recent government research that says the scores are not a reliable predictor of a carrier’s safety.
The groups also say the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Amdministration needs to make improving the CSA safety program a “high priority.” The letter is signed by representatives from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the American Trucking Associations, the Truckload Carriers Association and others.
They cite a Government Accountability Office report from February that found that FMCSA “lacks sufficient safety performance information to reliably compare them with other carriers.” The GAO report also concluded the system was bias against small carriers.
That lack of data could produce Safety Measurement System scores (the heart of the CSA program) that “do not represent an accurate or precise safety assessment for a carrier,” the letter says.
“Having accurate, relevant and up-to-date information is paramount to knowing the true condition of a carrier and making any conclusions about its safety, good or bad. Unfortunately, CSA does not meet that standard,” says Todd Spencer, OOIDA executive vice-president. “CSA was developed as a tool for enforcement agencies, and nothing in our request changes their access to information about carriers.”
Removing the scores from public view will “spare motor carriers harm from erroneous scores,” the groups write, and it will mitigate the chance that the system will drive business to riskier carriers that have “erroneously” been portrayed as safer, according to the letter.
Overdrive Senior Editor Todd Dills has written at length in 2013 and 2014 about the data and consistency problems that plague CSA, which are only made worse by the public nature of the scores. Click here to access Overdrive’s CSA’s Data Trail site to see the articles.
