Crash-review DataQs: Why owner-ops, small fleets should file for 'nonpreventable' determinations

If you're not filing to FMCSA's DataQs system for crash preventability reviews, says compliance consultant Rick Gobbell in this edition of Overdrive Radio, you're "playing badminton in the dark" when it comes to the compliance game.

Proprietor today of his Gobbell Transportation Safety compliance consulting business, Gobbell draws on long experience around trucks and trucking, first on the road as an enforcement officer, then in government directly. He's a past "head fed," as he put it, division lead in Tennessee for federal motor carrier enforcement, yet now represents carriers during audits and files a whole lot of DataQs. His business website: https://rgobbell.com/

This episode features his talk from the conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies this past November, where he emphasized the importance of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s DataQs system for the smallest fleets, particularly when it comes to the agency’s several-years-old Crash Preventability Determination Program. Regular readers will know Overdrive’s and our sister publication CCJ’s “Preventable or not?” series of videos illustrating crash scenarios that in past have been judged either preventable or nonpreventable for the truck’s driver by the National Safety Council: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4381538

That same preventability standard underpins FMCSA’s crash program. For any carrier who submits a crash in the DataQs system and has it judged nonpreventable, the crash then is excluded from calculations of the carrier's scores in the CSA Safety Measurement System. If you never request a crash review in cases that might be nonpreventable, as Rick Gobbell sees it, though the system is not set up to designate every crash that happens as "preventable," reality is that the crash might be de facto assumed to have been preventable by anyone using the SMS there. That includes federal and state safety auditors, insurers, brokers and shippers.

"You just made the audit list," he said.

His talk aimed to drill home the importance of the crash review system for the small fleets in attendance, lending the benefit of his own experience assisting others in DataQs filings. Also: To emphasize proposed improvements to the program to potentially include many more crash types, including any crash with solid video evidence. FMCSA’s in the process of making those improvements in part to address core complaints about the review system, potentially doubling the number of crashes that could be reviewed: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15382943/fmcsa-eyes-changes-to-crash-preventability-determination-program

With the agency also eyeing a safety rating change that might hinge on data quality in the SMS, DataQ-ing nonpreventable crashes could assume far greater importance for carriers large and small in the future, as Gobbell suggests here.

Find Rick Gobbell's comment, one of just 62 filed in response to FMCSA's notice last year about the potential changes, by searching the notice docket here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2022-0233-0001

DataQs resources at OverdriveOnline.com:

**How to request a data review for an eligible crash: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14897753/how-to-dataq-a-crash-in-new-fmcsa-preventability-program

**Overdrive's 2021 series exploring inequities in the DataQs system and ideas for improvement also includes plenty in the way of DataQs advice/tips: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15063803/criticism-of-dataqs-review-system-continues-to-rise

**How to mount an effective DataQs challenge: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15063812/how-to-dataq-to-challenge-a-violation