Getting it right

June 6, 2016
FMCSA’s insistence on using bad data ensures a bad safety rule

I can’t really call it spare time because it seems I am always on the move, but when extra time comes my way, I often find myself building something, refinishing forgotten furniture, or even starting a DIY home project that never seems to get finished. But I can happily say that I abide by the age-old carpenter’s mantra of  “measure twice, cut once.”

That very phrase has saved me multiple trips to Home Depot for extra lumber and even prevented a few tables from leaning left or right. Make sure your measurements are accurate, and the finished product will look that much better. Now if the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) lived by those words, we as an industry would not be heading into a safety fitness determination tunnel with no visible light at the end.

Since revealing itself in the Federal Register in January and granting an extension for comments until May, this issue has been nothing short of contentious. Even as I write this column, 36 congressional leaders in the House of Representatives have sent a letter to the agency to halt this rule until CSA is fixed. It seems that even Congress is intent on assuring that the agency measure twice to make sure the finished product is as accurate as it should be.
We have all been there, sat in workshops, listened to speakers; in fact, I have often mentioned this in my presentations. The CSA data used to determine a carrier’s BASIC scores is flawed and incorrect. And one time I actually heard it called “mumbo jumbo.” 

So, what exactly is the point?  Well, using that same flawed data to determine if a carrier is unfit will most likely lend itself to a virtual visit to a hardware store or perhaps a tilted score or two across the industry. Why? Because the agency is using vastly unreliable measurements—if the measurements exist at all—to rate the safety fitness of carriers.

Like it or not, we (the agency and the industry) are in this together. We share a mutual goal of reducing accidents; if there is a person in trucking who feels differently, then they should be removed from operating on our highways.

Safety and improving upon it is the consummate goal of this industry. I don’t know of one carrier that is afraid to be measured on its safety performance; however, I also know that each of those carriers insist on being measured correctly, focusing on the right things that indeed prevent crashes. Even the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, has determined that the vast majority of violations in CSA are not violated enough to draw correlations to crash risk. 

The method of determining whether or not a carrier is unfit is certainly flawed to say the least. The industry knows it, Congress has voiced its concern over it, and it is time that the agency begin to recognize that before we move into yet another regulation or measurement system that just doesn’t work.

Perhaps it is time we start following the lead of other industries and put in the work at the beginning of the process. The measure twice, cut once philosophy will assure us of getting the right numbers to build upon from the beginning. The proper foundation will prevent this industry from further uncertainty by relying upon faulty data that we then spend the next five years trying to undo. 

About the Author

David Heller

David Heller is the senior vice president of safety and government affairs for the Truckload Carriers Association. Heller has worked for TCA since 2005, initially as director of safety, and most recently as the VP of government affairs. Before that, he spent seven years as manager of safety programs for American Trucking Associations.

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