The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has pinned a lot of its hopes for fighting freight fraud, which it's recently called a "public safety crisis masquerading as an economic problem," on a new, updated registration system for carriers, brokers and other users and its beefed-up ID verification steps.
At the Mid-America Trucking Show in March, Overdrive Video Editor Lawson Rudisill and I paid a visit to the FMCSA booth in the North Wing lobby to test-drive the new ID vertification system along with other attendees -- maybe even kick the tires, so to speak. We sat down with Alex Vanjani, FMCSA's director of research and registration products, to talk about how the new system will work.
[Related: Part of anti-fraud bid, FMCSA will launch 'Motus,' new 'one-stop shop' for all carrier business]
Anyone who wants to get a new authority or update an existing one, starting sometime soon, will have to go through these steps, which include using a smartphone to scan a driver's license and then taking a selfie to match to that license to verify who you are.
FMCSA hoped to create a quick and painless experience with the new system, but we ran into a couple of snags you'll see in the video up top. Overall, though, the ID-verify steps were fairly simple and seem to be in working order.
The video offers more of a full walkthrough with Vanjani and my own commentary about the process -- can you guess where we came down on a 1-10 scale for hassle? Find out in the video.
Big thanks to our video man Lawson Rudsill for making it happen.
[Related: The criminal element lurking in FMCSA's registration system]
