After more than a decade of debate, studies, and even an act of Congress, FMCSA is preparing to roll out major changes to its Compliance, Safety, Accountability Safety Measurement System. Those who have watched this process unfold will recall the 2015 legislation that called on an independent body, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, to assess the scoring system and recommend improvements. The planned changes to the SMS come in response to the National Academies’ recommendations and calls from the industry that the program be revamped. FMCSA floated the planned changes in February 2023 and, in November of 2024, announced its intent to implement them—likely later this year. An anticipated announcement on when the changes will be made effective is still pending. In the meantime, here is a summary of the major ones.
How FMCSA is reorganizing measurement categories
Fleets are currently measured in seven areas called behavioral analysis safety improvement categories. FMCSA will rename them simply “compliance categories” and reorganize them. Most of this reshuffling will go unnoticed by most carriers, but two are somewhat significant.
First, FMCSA will measure vehicle maintenance violations in two categories: 1) vehicle maintenance and 2) vehicle maintenance: driver observed. This will allow the agency to separately measure those violations that a driver should have reasonably spotted before or while operating the vehicle. Fleets with sound maintenance programs but drivers who fail to diligently conduct pre-trip inspections (and vice versa) may notice a change to their scores and what they say about the fleets’ safety management controls.
Second, the agency will eliminate the controlled substance and alcohol category and place violations from it into the unsafe driving category. This change will be less noticeable, except for the few fleets that have committed violations of the drug and alcohol regulations. The rest will simply notice that the category is gone.
How FMCSA is simplifying severity weights
Currently, each violation is assigned a severity weight on a scale of 1-10, which reflects its presumed correlation to crash risk and crash severity. FMCSA will soon simplify its formula and assign almost all violations the same weight of one “point” each. The exception will be violations resulting in the issuance of out-of-service orders and driver violations deemed disqualifying under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. These more serious violations will be assigned two points. This could impact fleets that have a pattern of committing minor violations and how they compare to fleets that commit more severe ones (albeit less frequently).
See also: Rohlwing: CSA: Wheel ways to stay safe
How FMCSA is changing recent violations
Fleets are currently assigned “scores” in each category if they have had violations in the prior two years. Soon, however, FMCSA will no longer assign a score in most categories unless the fleet has committed a violation in that category in the prior 12 months. This is a small victory for fleets that have deliberately addressed their prior deficiencies and improved their performance from the previous year. Note: This change will not apply to the Unsafe Driving or Crash categories.
How FMCSA is changing intervention thresholds
FMCSA generally assigns each fleet a percentile rank in each category based on its performance compared to other fleets of similar size and exposure. Those fleets that are above the pre-determined thresholds in each category are presumably prioritized for some form of agency “intervention” such as an on-site compliance review (i.e., audit). FMCSA will soon change some of the thresholds in an acknowledgement that poor scores in some categories bear a weaker correlation to crash risk than others. Specifically, they will raise the thresholds in the driver fitness and hazardous materials compliance categories. As a result, fleets above the thresholds in other categories will be prioritized.
Other changes FMCSA is making
There will be several additional changes that will only affect certain segments of the industry or be noticed by a minority of carriers.
For instance, in the H.M. compliance category, FMCSA will separately measure cargo tank and non-bulk carriers. In the driver fitness category, the agency will measure fleets that primarily operate straight trucks independently from those that primarily operate combination vehicles. They will also raise the mileage cap for measuring exposure in the unsafe driving and crash categories. This will be most welcomed by fleets that operate teams and have very high asset utilization (e.g., annual mileage per truck).
Last, there will be a change to how carriers’ performance measures are compared against others in their respective safety event (i.e., peer) groups. This will provide some relief for fleets that see dramatic changes in their rankings (i.e., scores) when moving between groups.
By and large, these changes will be welcomed by fleets since they address some long-standing concerns with the SMS. As with all changes to the scoring system, there will be some winners and losers, especially when you consider that the scores reflect comparative performance. But for the most part, these adjustments will address some common objections and subdue some criticisms of the program.
