Transportation Officials Seek to Revise Safety Measurement System

Late last month, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published a proposal with suggested changes to its Safety Management System (SMS), which is the program FMCSA uses under its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program to identify and prioritize commercial motor vehicle safety interventions. Specifically, the proposal would change certain thresholds to better account for crash risk, reclassify violations for operating will out-of-service, update the Hazardous Materials Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC), and make adjustments to the Utilization Factor.

NRMCA has argued since the inception of CSA and the SMS that crash risk needs to be evaluated on a more comprehensive scale and that not-at-fault crashes should be excluded from a carriers’ and drivers’ safety ratings. FMCSA is accepting comments on the proposal through Wednesday, July 29.

Click here to view the proposed changes. For more information, contact Kevin Walgenbach at kwalgenbach@nrmca.org or Gary Mullings at gmullings@nrmca.org.