While many in the industry have been quick to point out the numerous problems with CSA 2010, it is important to note that the program is a step in the right direction. For well over a decade, FMCSA’s enforcement model has been criticized for being too focused on prescriptive compliance with paperwork requirements. For instance, a carrier’s safety rating can be based on the condition of the carrier’s maintenance records – regardless of the condition of its vehicles. Conversely, CSA 2010 will put more focus on actual safety performance: roadside inspection results, vehicle defects, driver violations and crashes. This new approach is a welcome change from the current enforcement model.
However, the current CSA 2010 methodology is not without its faults. The systems for weighting violation severity, measuring relative risk exposure, and ultimately scoring each carrier’s relative safety performance include a number of flaws. If not corrected, these flaws could result in relatively safe carriers being erroneously labeled as “safety-deficient” and, conversely, relatively unsafe carriers continuing to operate without agency intervention.
To their credit, agency officials have listened to stakeholders’ concerns and – in many cases – expressed a willingness to make changes to the system that will address these concerns. However, the details of these changes are not yet known and some of these changes will not be made before the system is initially implemented on November 30. While we are encouraged by the agency’s willingness to listen and make changes, we are vitally concerned that the system could be implemented using the existing, flawed methodology.
FMCSA stresses that in the near term the system will merely be used as a “workload prioritization tool” so that investigators can focus their resources on the least safe operators. Also, the agency points out that the system will not be used to assign formal safety fitness determinations (a.k.a. safety ratings) until sometime in 2011 or later. However, beginning November 30, public scores of carrier safety measurements will be posted on-line; thousands of carriers will be labeled as “deficient” in one or more safety categories.
Let’s make no mistake, a statement that a carrier is “deficient’ in any one of the safety categories is a rating of the carrier. To suggest otherwise is simply folly. These ratings will have profound consequences as shippers, brokers, insurers and plaintiffs’ attorneys will all use them to make judgments about carriers. In many cases these negative ratings – and the attendant consequences – will be warranted. But because they will based on flawed methodology (at least initially) these ratings will sometimes be unwarranted, since they will be tagged on relatively safe, responsible carriers.
FMCSA defends public display of this data saying that doing so allows “…FMCSA to leverage the support of shippers, insurers and other interested stakeholders to ensure that motor carriers remain accountable for sustaining safe operations over time.” That justification makes sense, but only if the system accurately identifies and labels unsafe carriers as such. Otherwise, it merely exacerbates the injustice done by assigning an erroneous rating. Accordingly, FMCSA should do one of two things: 1) fix the flaws in the methodology before the system is implemented; or 2) redact affected elements from public view, so that safe carriers don’t suffer additional, unwarranted consequences of erroneous safety ratings.
