What’s different?
New focus
CSA is a very different way for the government to audit both a company’s drivers and its vehicles. The government’s goal is to reduce the number of fatal crashes involving commercial motor vehicles. To achieve this goal, they have shifted their focus from carriers to drivers and vehicles. They have also begun to concentrate on the behaviors that are associated with crash risk. Violations are based on risky behaviors, and they are organized around drivers and trucks.
Everything counts
The current system emphasizes out-of-service violations when it comes to safety ratings. Under CSA, every violation left unchallenged contributes points toward safety scores:
- Seemingly minor violations, like reflective tape that’s not properly affixed or a lamp that’s not burning steadily
- Violations that are wrongly attributed to your fleet but actually belong to another carrier
- Duplicate violations
- Clean inspections
Peer ranking
The new system ranks carriers against their peer groups. This creates a standard statistical “bell shaped” curve, with the bulk of carriers falling in the middle. Carriers whose safety performance is much better than their peers will lie at one end of the curve, and carriers who are much worse than their peers will lie at the other end. Your fleet must stay out of the “much worse” group because these are the carriers who face interventions or are deemed unfit by the FMCSA. Even within the “bell” it is important to be as far away from the danger zone as possible. Interventions will also occur for companies that are close to the danger zone but not actually in it.
Severe consequences
The stated purpose of CSA is “to reach more carriers and drivers sooner, so that problems can be identified and corrected before a crash occurs.” Prior to this new rule, the likelihood of a company undergoing a full on-site audit was very small — only 2% of all the fleets each year.
The new rule has now put into place a new term – “intervention”. No longer does the DOT have to perform a full audit to obtain information about a carrier’s safety practices. It can now use an intervention to investigate problems identified at roadside inspections or through other observations of a driver’s on-the-road performance. In the worst of all possible cases, a company can literally be declared unsafe and put out of business.
Under the new rule, poor safety measures can easily spiral out of control. Poor measures mark a fleet for closer scrutiny – more frequent and more intense (Level 1) inspections. Closer scrutiny uncovers more violations, which lead to more poor measures. By addressing issues immediately, you can avoid falling into this downward spiral.
Reversing poor ratings is difficult. It requires the passage of time, as older violations are weighted less in the ratings formula. It also requires better safety behaviors. Ratings are based on the most recent 24 months of safety data. As time passes, better safety practices will result in fewer violations, which in turn result in better ratings.
What carriers can expect
Expect volumes of violations data
Carriers will be responsible for an unprecedented volume of data under CSA because the new system will track more types of data, from more sources, for more entities.
- Safestat, the current safety measurement system, measures four broad categories of data. The new Safety Measurement System (SMS) will measure the seven BASICs categories with a great amount of violations detail in each category.
- Safestat only assesses the safety performance of carriers, but SMS assesses individual drivers and carriers.
- Safestat only uses out-of-service violations and a select number of moving violations found during inspections. The new Safety Measurement Systems (SMS) will use ALL safety violations found during inspections.
Expect bad data
More than 3.3 million roadside inspections are conducted annually. Inspections are inconsistent because they are performed by many separate entities (city, state, federal). As a result, the quality of state data may be questionable. According to the FMCSA, thirty-five states are rated as “fair” or “poor” in at least one category of data measurement.
All violations data counts (even inaccurate data)
The current system emphasizes out-of-service violations when it comes to safety ratings. Under CSA, every safety violation contributes to your safety scores. This includes clean roadside inspections, which can boost your ratings.
Expect continuous changes
Data from roadside inspections are continuously added to the government’s database. Every day, you’re at risk of receiving a violation that will push your fleet into the deficient zone for one or more BASICs. And, every 30 days, your fleet’s ratings are updated on CSI, the government’s Comprehensive Safety Information system. This information will be available for everyone – including insurance companies and shippers – to see.
Click here for more of “What Carriers Need to Know” about CSA.