The industry needs truck drivers’ feedback! The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) recently launched its second annual truck driver survey to identify CSA impacts on trucking operations, as well as driver perceptions and attitudes toward the maturing regulatory program.
This survey, which will expand upon the truck driver research that ATRI undertook at last month's Mid-America Trucking Show, will be compared and contrasted with last year's CSA research, which included data from more than 5,000 drivers.
The brief online survey asks drivers for information on how their perceptions of CSA have changed or been affected as CSA continues its second full year of measuring motor carrier and commercial driver safety performance. The survey also seeks to capture attitudes toward the program and general understanding of its key components.
Commercial drivers are encouraged to provide confidential input on CSA through ATRI's survey. The combined results of the survey will be available later this year, accompanied by findings from ATRI's surveys of other stakeholder groups impacted by CSA, including motor carriers, shippers and the enforcement community.
ATRI is the trucking industry’s 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research organization. It is engaged in critical research relating to freight transportation’s essential role in maintaining a safe, secure and efficient transportation system. Visit ATRI’s recently updated website at www.atri-online.org.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
Trucking 2011: Year in Review - CSA, HOS, Distracted Driving, & more
As 2011 winds to a close, it proved to be another year full of safety and regulatory changes.
This special Year in Review segment highlights some of the articles from some of the most controversial and widely followed topics throughout the year.
We'll begin with Hours-of-Service (HOS) since this has been the most contested topic this year.
Hours of Service
• Happy Holidays! New Truck Driver HOS Rule expected by Christmas (12/05/2011)
• Final Truck Driver HOS Could Come Soon (11/10/2011)
• New Truck Driver HOS Deadline Looms – What’s Next? (10/20/2011)
• Truck Drivers’ Final HOS Rule Expected by October 28 (09/22/2011)
• FMCSA Delays Release of new Driver Hours-of-Service Rule (06/19/2011)
• FMCSA Publishes New Hours of Service Proposed Rule (01/16/2011)
Distracted Driving
• Final Rule Prohibits Hand-Held Cell Phone Use by CDL Truck Drivers (12/06/2011)
• Industry Awaits Final Rule to Ban Cell-Phone Use by CDL Drivers (11/09/2011)
• NTSB Recommends Complete Cell Phone Ban for Truck Drivers (09/22/2011)
• FMCSA Proposes Rule to Ban Hand-Held Cell Phone Use for Truck Drivers (01/17/2011)
Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA)
• CSA Report Reflects Positive Feedback from Trucking Industry (12/04/2011)
• CSA Study Reveals Strengths & Weaknesses (09/24/2011)
• Report Reveals Most Truck Drivers Lack CSA Understanding (08/22/2011)
Sleep Apnea
• FMCSA Receives Sleep Apnea Recommendation for Truck Drivers (12/08/2011)
• FMCSA Adds Sleep Apnea Page to Website (07/13/2011)
• FMCSA Considers New Information on Sleep Apnea & Diabetes (07/12/2011)
Driver Medical Certification
• Update to Truck Driver Medical Certificate Changes (12/05/2011)
Driver Shortage
• Many Trucking Companies Facing Driver Shortages (02/07/2011)
Drug & Alcohol Testing
• Pending Bill to Address Drug/Alcohol Testing of CDL Drivers (05/12/2011)
EOBRs / Electronic Logs
• FMCSA Proposes EOBR Mandate for All Interstate Truck Drivers (02/03/2011)
Various Safety
• Economy, Hours-of-Service, Driver Shortage Top Trucking Concerns (10/19/2011)
• CDL Drivers: Reduce Accidents with Safe Backing Procedures (07/16/2011)
• Roadcheck 2011 Shows CDL Driver Safety Continues to Improve (07/15/2011)
• Will the FMCSA Begin Ranking CDL Drivers? (07/14/2011)
• Top 10 Work Zone Safety Tips for CDL Drivers (04/17/2011)
• FMCSA Regulatory Update (03/05/2011)
• Video Interview: FMCSA Administrator Discusses Safety Strategy (03/05/2011)
• Winter Weather Truck Driving (01/04/2011)
Driving Ambition will continue to blog with updates on important safety and regulatory topics. You can also visit us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for additional information.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) has released a report detailing the impact that Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) has had on the daily operations of trucking companies.
CSA, which was implemented in December 2010, gathers inspection and violation data about motor carriers, then assigns weights to them and gives scores to the carriers and drivers based on their compliance with safety regulations.
ATRI’s report also describes and analyzes motor carrier attitudes toward and comprehension of FMCSA’s new regulatory program, based on survey data collected from 695 motor carriers.
While first year CSA impacts have not been dramatic, carriers who self-reported having one or more BASICs above threshold were markedly more likely to experience negative changes to their shipper and broker utilization, and insurance rates.
Although insurance costs have remained largely unchanged in CSA's first year of deployment, a small proportion of carriers (12.2%) who did experience a change almost equally reported insurance costs rising versus lowering since CSA's national implementation.
It also appears that smaller carriers are more closely scrutinized than their larger counterparts even though they had fewer self-reported BASICs above threshold.
Overall, however, most carriers believed CSA represents an improvement over SafeStat, and that it will remove unsafe carriers and drivers from the industry and improve safety.
This is the second report released by ATRI examining CSA impacts. Earlier this year, ATRI released the results of its commercial driver CSA survey.
“Our plan is to conduct both of these CSA surveys annually,” commented Rebecca Brewster, ATRI president and COO, “and we believe that both surveys will become key annual indicators of CSA impacts and progress over time.”
Later this year ATRI will release its full CSA study, reflecting both carrier and driver CSA impacts, along with additional CSA statistical analyses.
A copy of the motor carrier and driver survey results are available from ATRI at www.atri-online.org.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), the not-for-profit research institute for the trucking industry, recently unveiled the results of its annual Top Industry Issues Survey - the top ten Critical Issues in the Trucking Industry 2011.
The annual survey, commissioned by the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and conducted since 2005, asks trucking industry stakeholders to rank items such as CSA, Hours-of-Service (HOS), the driver shortage, onboard recorder technology, the economy, transportation funding, congestion, truck size and weight, and fuel issues.
Over 4,000 trucking executives across the nation responded to this year’s survey, and for the third year in a row, the state of the economy tops the list. The proposed changes to truck drivers’ HOS rules caused that issue to climb to the number two spot. The concern of a growing driver shortage took the third position on the list, in spite of a weak jobs market.
The complete top 10 list includes the economy, HOS, the driver shortage, CSA, fuel prices, congestion, infrastructure funding, tort reform, onboard truck technology and truck size and weight.
The survey’s results also provide insight by including proposed strategies for addressing each issue, thus allowing the ATA to better focus its advocacy role on behalf of the trucking industry.
ATRI is the trucking industry’s 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research organization. It is engaged in critical research relating to freight transportation’s essential role in maintaining a safe, secure and efficient transportation system. A copy of the survey results is available from ATRI at www.atri-online.org.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
FMCSA recently released the final evaluation of its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program’s Operational Model Test conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).
The in-depth study found that the Safety Measurement System (SMS) of CSA is a significant improvement over the FMCSA’s prior system, SafeStat, in identifying unsafe carriers. CSA interventions proved effective in improving motor carriers’ safety behavior, with the warning letter intervention resulting in 83% resolution to identified safety problems.
The UMTRI report also confirms that the CSA model, with the variety of interventions (warning letters, off-site focused reviews, etc.), enables FMCSA to contact far more trucking companies earlier to correct safety problems and ensure compliance with safety regulations in order to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities related to commercial motor vehicles. Approximately three times more motor carriers are contacted under CSA than under SafeStat (9.9 percent vs. 3.2 percent).
Despite the positive findings, the UMTRI report of the Op-Model Test also identified some areas that require improvement. FMCSA will need to make adjustments in two of the seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs - the Cargo-Related and the Driver Fitness BASICs - as they both show a weaker relationship to crash risk than the other SMS BASICs. Also, underreporting of crashes by states continues to be a significant problem.
FMCSA expects to address these issues in its upcoming proposal to establish safety fitness determinations based on CSA data. That proposal is scheduled to be published in February 2012.
Launched in 2008, the CSA Op-Model Test divided motor carriers from four test states (Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, and New Jersey) between test and control groups. UMTRI evaluated the effectiveness of the new SMS and CSA interventions, and compared the cost and efficiency of the CSA compliance and enforcement model to the previous model. They found effectiveness and efficiency gains that fully support the ongoing national implementation of CSA. View the full UMTRI Report.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
Important Reminder: There’s still time to complete the annual Top Industry Issues Survey - the deadline is Friday, September 23.
Since 2005, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), a non-profit research organization for the trucking industry, has conducted its annual Top Industry Issues Survey.
The annual survey, commissioned by the American Trucking Associations (ATA), asks trucking industry stakeholders to rank items such as CSA, Hours-of-Service, the driver shortage, onboard recorder technology, the economy, transportation funding, congestion, truck size and weight, and fuel issues.
Designed to provide insight into the critical issues confronting the trucking industry now and in the future, the survey also proposes strategies for addressing each issue, and survey participants are asked for their preferences.
Industry stakeholders are encouraged to complete the survey online. Alternately a paper copy is available on ATRI’s website at www.atri-online.org.
Completing the survey takes a matter of minutes and is valuable information in shaping the policies for addressing the major issues.
The results of the 2011 survey will first be released at the ATA Annual Management Conference and Exhibition, to be held October 15-18, 2011 in Grapevine, Texas.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
A recent report from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) revealed that truck drivers don’t fully comprehend Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA), the FMCSA’s new regulatory program.
The report, based on survey data collected from over 4,500 truck drivers earlier this year, uncovers a lack of understanding of what CSA is and does. For example, over 77 percent of the truck drivers surveyed incorrectly believe that a trucking company inherits past violations from newly hired truck drivers. In addition, nearly two-thirds of truck drivers are concerned that they will lose their jobs as a result of CSA.
The ATRI report, which can be seen here, also includes recommendations for enhancing driver knowledge and support through multiple training and educational sessions. What’s clear, based on the report, is that “motor carriers, state trucking associations and FMCSA collectively need to do more to educate drivers about CSA and what it does and doesn’t mean for their jobs,” said Ed Crowell, Georgia Motor Trucking Association President and CEO.
Nearly two years ago, in an effort to further enhance our drivers’ safety awareness, Driving Ambition embraced a robust driver safety training program using Vertical Alliance’s Infinit-i safety training platform. The fact that drivers can simply go online and log-in to complete over 200 safety-related modules, including CSA, is what makes Infinit-i’s program so valuable.
Driving Ambition will continue to do our part to reduce the number of truck drivers who have misconceptions about CSA. In the meantime, please find more helpful CSA resources for truck drivers below.
CSA Resources for Truck Drivers
- www.csa.fmcsa.dot.gov– The FMCSA has improved several areas on its CSA website
- The Your Role pages have been enhanced and a new section specifically for drivers has been added. Each role page now contains a stakeholder-specific toolkit of CSA materials, links to important FMCSA websites, and a comprehensive list of questions and answers specific to each major stakeholder group.
- A new Resources page, where stakeholders can download a toolkit customized to their role, has replaced the previous news and media page. A new search feature allows visitors to customize their searches using keywords or simple checkboxes. The search results provide the most relevant documents as well as a list of the top five relevant Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
- Vertical Alliance’s Infinit-i Safety Training
- Driving Ambition’s CSA Blog Updates
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
Continuing a process begun in 2005, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), a non-profit research organization for the trucking industry, is again conducting its annual Top Industry Issues Survey.
The annual survey, commissioned by the American Trucking Associations (ATA), asks trucking industry stakeholders to rank items such as CSA, Hours-of-Service, the driver shortage, onboard recorder technology, the economy, transportation funding, congestion, truck size and weight, and fuel issues.
Designed to provide insight into the critical issues confronting the trucking industry now and in the future, the survey also proposes strategies for addressing each issue, and survey participants are asked for their preferences.
Industry stakeholders are encouraged to complete the survey online. Alternately a paper copy is available on ATRI’s website at www.atri-online.org.
The results of the 2011 survey will first be released at the ATA Annual Management Conference and Exhibition, to be held October 15-18, 2011 in Grapevine, Texas.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) recently launched a survey to identify CSA impacts on trucking operations, as well as carrier perceptions and attitudes toward FMCSA’s new regulatory program.
This survey, targeted to motor carriers, follows ATRI’s successful survey initiative at this year’s Mid-America Trucking Show, which assessed CSA impacts on nearly 5,000 commercial drivers.
The brief on-line survey asks carriers for information on how operations have changed or been affected since the full deployment of CSA in December of last year. The survey also seeks to capture attitudes toward the program and general understanding of its key components.
Motor carriers are encouraged to provide confidential input on CSA through ATRI’s survey, available online at www.atri-online.org. The results of the carrier and driver surveys will be available later this year.
ATRI is the trucking industry’s 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research organization. It is engaged in critical research relating to freight transportation’s essential role in maintaining a safe, secure and efficient transportation system.
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.
CVSA’s annual 72 hour enforcement campaign, Roadcheck, was conducted June 7-9. The results from the effort were recently announced, and the numbers look better than they have for years. The data reveals that the commercial motor carrier and motor coach industries continue to improve the maintenance and safety of their operations, with overall out-of-service (OOS) rates being the lowest since Roadcheck began.
Nearly 8,000 CVSA and FMCSA certified inspectors across North America performed 70,712 truck and bus inspections during the three-day event. Inspectors focused on the North American Standard (NAS) Level I inspection, motorcoach inspections, hours of service logbooks, and household goods (HHG) carriers.
Drivers were pulled over or directed into weigh stations or other inspection locations and asked to show their commercial driver's license, medical examiner's certificate and record of duty status. Brakes, tires, lights and every major safety component of the truck or bus, plus proper load securement were also examined during Roadcheck.
Once again, hours of service (HOS) logbook violations lead overwhelmingly as a percentage of all driver violations cited, as over 50% of drivers placed OOS because of HOS violations. With CSA’s Fatigued Driving BASIC, these HOS violations affect both the driver’s and the carrier’s CSA scores. Only 14% of those drivers inspected indicated they were using electronic logs.
This year’s data shows the overall vehicle compliance rate at 80.7% (80.0% in 2010), with an overall driver compliance rate of 95.8% (95.6% from last year). For Level I inspections, the compliance rates were up to 77.2% for vehicles (76.7% in 2010) and 96.3% for drivers (unchanged from 2010). In addition, there were 296 fewer safety belt violations in 2011 (863 vs. 1,159 in 2010).
"Although overall out-of-service rates are at record lows, there is room for improvement until the roads are free from vehicle and driver violations," said CVSA's Executive Director Stephen A. Keppler. "Events that focus on ensuring vehicles and drivers are complying with the law, like Roadcheck and all roadside inspections, draw critical attention to out-of-service rates and are shown to also impact crash reductions."
This is especially true with as we ALL look to improve our CSA scores.
If you are a driver who was inspected during Roadcheck 2011, please share your experience by commenting on this post. Were you cited for anything, warned for anything, or did you get a clean inspection?
Driving Ambition is a premier CDL truck driver staffing company serving Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since 2001, we have specialized in matching safe, experienced CDL drivers for our customers and great job opportunities for our professional truck drivers.
Our commitment to safety and building solid working relationships with both customers and CDL drivers has allowed us to earn an unparalleled reputation with our Proven Drivers and Exceptional Service.