The National Academy of Sciences last week released a report indicating that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Safety Measurement System (SMS), which is used to determine how carriers and drivers are scored on safety issues within the Compliance, Safety, Accountability Program, while "defensible" could use some updates and/or switch to a different type of modeling system to obtain better and more accurate scoring of carriers and drivers. The report, commissioned by FMCSA at the direction of Congress in 2015, provides recommendations about how to improve the system within a two-year time frame.

NRMCA welcomes this development and commends the FMCSA for announcing its intention of accepting the study’s findings. FMCSA has indicated it plans to move toward implementing the study’s recommendations in order to correct changes to the program and prevent more and future carriers and drivers from erroneously being labeled unsafe.