ATRI Releases Study on CSA State Enforcement Disparities
On Thursday, July 31st, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released a comprehensive study examining the effects State enforcement disparities play on a carrier’s safety performance metrics. ATRI found that eliminating state enforcement disparities on Safety Measurement System (SMS) scores would, in many cases, changes the scores drastically. Across the seven carriers and four public BASICs that ATRI analyzed, scores decreased by as much as 17.7 points and increased by as much as 12.2 points from the actual scores reported by the SMS.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program is a national initiative to improve commercial motor vehicle safety by evaluating motor carriers using a uniform suite of safety metrics. A key component of this initiative is the Safety Measurement System (SMS) that analyzes data on motor carrier inspections, violations, and operations in an attempt to calculate a score for each carrier in seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs). The BASIC scores, five of which are visible to the public, are used to assess the safety performance of carriers relative to their peers and are often used by shippers and receivers to identify motor carriers they perceive to be more or less safe at some preconceived threshold.
Despite the uniformity of the SMS in its calculation of BASIC scores, the intensity and focus of enforcement activities is largely at the discretion of each state. This has resulted in 50 or more different enforcement programs and strategies that are used to populate a uniform score (within each BASIC) of nationwide performance. ATRI investigated the impact of differing enforcement priorities on the trucking industry through four specific tasks.
To request you free copy of the ATRI report, please visit the following ATRI website at http://atri-online.org/2014/07/31/atri-releases-study-evaluating-the-impact-of-cmv-enforcement-disparities-on-carrier-safety-performance/
Source: Transportation Intermediaries Association
