CSA Study Reveals Strengths & Weaknesses
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.
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