Tag: safety rating: Page 2

Owner-operators, industry groups weigh in on proposed Safety Fitness Determination rule

The resounding sentiment from most that submitted comments on the rule was that the FMCSA is getting ahead of itself by issuing the rulemaking before the Compliance, Safety, Accountability Safety Measurement System has been reviewed and its problems worked out.

June 1, 2016

How ELDs could be the new radar guns

If the SFD process as proposed becomes regulation, and the ELD mandate isn’t struck down by the federal courts or otherwise derailed, on-site auditors may garner an extra-effective tool in their arsenal for declaring a carrier Unfit on the basis of hours, moving violations.

May 26, 2016

One of Georgia's TruCam Lidar speed guns

Data-mining firm: Safety rating rule not much of an improvement over current system

A new analysis by the CSA data-mining firm Vigillo concludes the SFD’s roadside-data-only methodology to determine an unfit carrier is ineffective “in identifying a significant number of riskier carriers based on the data alone.”

May 23, 2016

Utilizing the April CSA Safety Measurement System snapshot, Vigillo determined that, under the parameters of the SFD as proposed, 178 carriers out of the total 1,561,912 DOT numbers fail two BASICs. Most such companies, Vigillo notes, are domiciled in Mexican states, as shown above.

Proposed Safety Fitness Determination rule comment period closes May 23

The SFD rule would replace the current three-tier federal rating system of “Satisfactory, Conditional and Unsatisfactory” for carriers with a single determination of “Unfit,” which would require the carrier to either improve its operations or shut down.

May 19, 2016

truckinspection

‘A broken system’: Small fleet owner on CSA, SFD reliance on roadside inspections, violations

Hazmat, securement violations for a two-gallon tote holding spare oil? Check. Bob Delullo’s thoughts on CSA and the proposed SFD rule are a variation on the “garbage in, garbage out” phrase to describe systems doomed by the component parts on which they are based.

April 12, 2016

Bob DeLullo started in trucking as a driver in 1986, he says. Since then, he believes, most aspects of the business of trucking have improved — from equipment to pay and image, however slightly in some cases. “But regulation is going haywire. … The regs side of this business is the single biggest issue we have.”

‘Absolute measure’ scores to return to public CSA SMS with next update

Contrary to prior reports, FMCSA is not done with substantive additions to the interim CSA SMS public display — carriers’ “absolute measures,” which underly the hidden percentiles in each BASIC category, will return in March to public view.

February 24, 2016

VM-BASIC-carrier-measure-example

So does FMCSA’s safety rating rule in fact violate Congressional directive?

Another week, another letter to Congress from an ad hoc coalition of groups challenging FMCSA’s new safety rating rule’s release on grounds it violates the FAST Act highway bill.

February 4, 2016

golden triangle

DOT rule to implement new carrier rating system published, FMCSA seeking comment

FMCSA has published a proposed rule that would reform the way it rates carriers and determines their overall safety fitness to operate, and the agency is accepting public comment on the proposal for 60 days.

January 21, 2016

FMCSA issues rule proposal to tie safety rating directly to inspections, violations

Another month, another major rule proposed by FMCSA: The SFD rule would revamp the three-tier safety rating program to incorporate roadside inspection/violation data in addition to investigations and update monthly.

January 15, 2016

The agency has established an online SFD calculator through which motor carriers can test how the rule would affect them with their own data.

Safety rating poised to turn to roadside data, coalition issues challenge

The coalition that took on the recent highway bill’s “poison pill” successfully has issued something of a pre-emptive challenge to FMCSA’s proposed changes to the safety rating program.

January 12, 2016

golden triangle

The ‘poison pill’ that remains in the recently passed highway bill, by the numbers

Unless fixed or removed in the House-Senate highway bill conference committee, the House’s carrier “hiring standard” would unduly disadvantage well more than 1.5 million drivers for 440,000 carriers in the competition to secure business.

November 9, 2015

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TIA, OOIDA support proposed language change to eliminate highway bill ‘poison pill’ for Unrated carriers

The proposed change, to be considered this week during House highway bill debate, notably excludes the thousands of Conditional rated carriers operating amid increasing difficulty obtaining a review after correcting problems.

November 2, 2015

This chart, from July 2014 reporting on the current safety rating system, shows that since the advent of the CSA program, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has become much less likely to issue ratings. Of reviews of U.S. carriers in the then most recent complete fiscal year, 2013, about 76 percent of reviews that could have resulted in a safety rating actually did so. Compare that to the final pre-CSA year of 2010, when the percentage of ratable reviews was 87 percent. (Full FY 2014 numbers showed the trend stabilizing, with 75 percent of all reviews resulting in a safety rating; and, once again, more Conditional ratings were issued than Satisfactory ones.) Furthermore, the overall number of intensive carrier reviews – the kind that result in safety ratings – in 2010 was twice as high as the number conducted in 2013. That’s because the agency has shifted away from the traditional compliance review to greater reliance on more focused reviews and away from a safety-rating approach. Transportation attorney Hank Seaton has contended FMCSA has shifted accountability for determining carrier safety “from itself onto the shippers and brokers,” an attempt to “strong-arm the public” into doing the agency’s job.

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