CVSA Urges FMCSA to Remove CSA Scores from Public View
On November 14, the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) wrote a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx urging the Agency to remove the CSA SMS scores from public view. CVSA notes in the letter, that they fully support the CSA initiative as an enforcement tool for the Agency to prioritize carriers for intervention, but the program is not a good way to accurately assess carriers’ future crash risk.
The CVSA’s latest request to remove the CSA scores, builds upon similar recent request from the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) to remove them as well. Additionally, Congressman Lou Barletta (R-PA) introduced H.R. 5532, the “Safer Trucks and Buses Act of 2014”, which removes the CSA scores from public view, until the Agency improves the quality of the data. TIA supports the efforts of Congressman Barletta, but worries that this legislation would be a temporary fix to a serious problem. Simply removing the scores without reforming CSA and creating a national motor carrier hiring standard, is akin to putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.
TIA has been, and will continue, to play a leading role in the battle to reform CSA. To that extent, TIA worked with Congressman Jimmy Duncan (R-TN) to have H.R. 4727 introduced to solve the growing problem of negligent selection lawsuits against brokers that utilize CSA data. H.R. 4727 would create a national standard for hiring motor carriers, and would remove the confusing and conflicting vagaries of the BASIC data as it relates to the negligent selection of a carrier. TIA has also worked with our industry partners on the CSA Subcommittee to reform CSA as a tool for FMCSA to use in determining which motor carriers are unsafe. Unfortunately, the Agency has turned a deaf ear to those efforts.
