FMCSA Proposes Updates for Determining Carrier Safety Ratings
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Last week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published a proposal on how trucking companies, including ready mixed concrete companies, update their safety records. The current method for determining truck carrier safety ratings is through the Safety Measurement System (SMS) within FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program. Traditionally, the SMS relies on data from crashes, roadside inspections, HOS violations, and other incidents and investigations to determine a carrier’s safety rating, which may then be used for any potential intervention with the carrier.
These categories are known as BASICs, which then also help to apply a safety percentile to the carrier. They are is used to compare carriers relative to other carriers and further assess their safety performance, however the main targets of these assessments are generally high-risk carriers that receive greater scrutiny.
In 2017, Congress directed FMCSA to examine the SMS program and consider potential new schemes; this latest proposal is in response to that 2017 directive. To address the 2017 mandate, FMCSA specifically, and in part, has proposed changing the BASICs to safety categories, consolidating violations, adding new severity weightings, including carrier comparing changes, and changing intervention thresholds. FMCSA believes these changes will enhance the “fairness, accuracy, and clarity of our prioritization system.”
As part of FMCSA’s actions and in order to give carriers a sense of how the new changes will impact their data, FMCSA has introduced a website where carriers can log in and preview how their data would change should the proposal be enacted. FMCSA has also scheduled three different online listening sessions to review the proposal and answer questions from stakeholders. You can register to attend one of the sessions below:
- Thursday, March 7, 3-4 p.m. Eastern Time
- Tuesday, March 14, 3-4 p.m. Eastern Time
- Wednesday, March 15, 11 a.m.-noon, Eastern Time
Click here to review the proposal. FMCSA will accept comments on the proposal through May 16. The NRMCA staff contact is Kevin Walgenbach.
