Last week, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General released a report on the department’s investigation of the FMCSA’s CSA program.
The IG report FMCSA took “limited action” in addressing previous flaws the IG’s office found, including the FMCSA’s “inability to get 40 states and the DC to implement CSA interventions; not following standard technology validation and testing and for not pushing states to be consistent in correcting reams of inaccurate data,” the American Trucking Association stated.
“The Inspector General’s report confirms what industry stakeholders, independent researchers and other government watchdogs have found: there continue to be significant flaws in the data FMCSA is using to evaluate and score carriers under CSA,” said ATA Executive Vice President Dave Osiecki. “ATA continues to support the oversight mission and safety goals of CSA – but FMCSA must acknowledge the program’s many problems – and commit to addressing them.”
“The audit found that while FMCSA claims to have enough data to evaluate 40% of the industry – 13% of those companies report not owning or operating any trucks. Serious inaccuracies like this affect the scores of everyone scored under CSA – since carriers are compared to one another,” Osiecki said. “Though not ‘safety data’ per se, the I.G. also found that many motor carriers need to do a better job of reporting operational and exposure data, such as the number of trucks they operate.”
The ATA previously spoke out about their disappointment with the IG’s report for not taking a more critical look at the CSA system.
“ATA is disappointed that the I.G. didn’t take a critical look at the source of literally all CSA data, state enforcement agencies. While the SSDQ indicates states are performing better than they have in the past, the I.G. failed to examine under what circumstances a state might obtain a “good” rating. This is a critical link in CSA data quality that deserves greater attention.”
ATA’s document explaining the limitations of SSDQ ratings is available here.
American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation’s freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Good stuff. Trucks Bring It!
