This week's Overdrive Radio episode opens a window onto the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's virtual listening session held last week to discuss the agency’s efforts to potentially improve the safety rating system it uses for determining carriers’ fitness to operate in interstate commerce. Sit in on virtually the entire session, featuring a bevy of views from trucking stakeholders in response to chief areas of inquiry agency reps outlined near the top of the session.

Regular Overdrive readers will know the effort around the potential safety rating change has been a long time in coming. Since the CSA Safety Measurement System came into play a decade and a half ago, it's as if it's always been on the FMCSA's wish list to use roadside data, possibly even the SMS itself, to determine a safety rating. Yet past attempts to do so have faltered under scrutiny, with loads of pushback from carriers and owner-operators on the notion. This session was no outlier in that regard, it’s certain.

Commenter Daniel Shelton pointed out inadequacies he saw in a myriad violations used in parts of the CSA SMS that have really nothing to do with the bedrock indicator of safety in his mind, crashes that can reliably be shown as the fault of the motor carrier.

Shelton also questioned the agency’s Crash Preventability Determination Program and its efficacy in identifying nonpreventable crashes to exclude them from carriers’ records. Agency reps on the call noted that nonpreventable determinations would exclude those crashes from a safety rating, yet Shelton told a story about one such he’d seen up close and then attempted to use the DataQs system to remove from the record, only to find out it wasn't a crash type eligible for review in the preventability program. (Pending changes in that regard continue to be in limbo as the agency reviews comments on a 2023 proposal.)

All such issues, Shelton noted, will be big problems for the agency if it plans to utilize roadside and/or other SMS data in a new safety rating system.

Hear many more views and answers to questions about the effort in the podcast.

The virtual session last week was but one of two that are planned. You can register for the next July 31 session at this link: https://events.gcc.teams.microsoft.com/event/6d8b1246-2138-4ba9-821c-e926441fd2e1@c4cd245b-44f0-4395-a1aa-3848d258f78b

As also mentioned in the podcast, FMCSA changes to the CSA SMS methodology remain pending almost a year and a half since proposed: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15306821/fmcsa-launches-site-for-proposed-csa-carrier-sms-changes

More about those pending changes: https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15352537/proposed-csascores-change-a-mixed-bag-in-hos-category-others