In a press release, the American Trucking Association praised the FMCSA on its recent changes to the CSA program.
“It is refreshing when a regulatory agency listens to the concerns of those most impacted by their actions, so we should take time to praise FMCSA for taking steps to address issues ATA has raised,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said. “In looking more closely at violation severity weights, for instance, FMCSA is taking some steps to make sure CSA achieves its stated goal of targeting carriers with increased crash risk,” PR Newswire reported.
Last week, the FMCSA announced some changes to the CSA program. The changes included changing “Fatigued Driving” to “Hours of Service Compliance,” renaming the “Hazardous Materials” category “Hazardous Materials Compliance.”
To read the other modifications to the system, follow this link.
While the ATA says it’s pleased with the above changes, more changes are necessary. The ATA has repeatedly requested the FMCSA release its study on no-fault crashes, but the FMCSA has yet to do so. The ATA also wants the FMCSA to take a second look at its CSA scoring system.
According to PR Newswire, “These changes, while appreciated, point to the issue ATA has been urging FMCSA to address for some time: CSA scores are not necessarily indicative of elevated crash risk,” Graves said. “Several studies have told us this, and FMCSA’s changes indicate they believe it as well.
“ATA supports CSA’s original goal of reducing crashes by targeting unsafe carriers, but too often, the system highlights violations that bear little direct – or even indirect – relationship to crash risk,” he said. “FMCSA must continue to hold true to CSA’s original goal and make changes to the program as necessary to do so.”