CSA’s crash flaw: Enforcement,
accident rates do not mesh
Published June 10, 2013
CSA'S DATA TRAIL
The article below is
part of a yearlong, in-depth series on the U.S. Department of Transportation's
Compliance, Safety, Accountability program that analyzes two full years' worth
of data — December 2010 (the program's beginning) to December 2012. CCJ editors
have built a site dedicated to hosting the stories, interactive maps and
downloadable data at CCJdigital.com/csa.
-
See more at:
http://www.ccjdigital.com/csas-crash-flaw-enforcement-accident-rates-do-not-mesh/#sthash.5iVF98DS.dpuf
CSA'S DATA TRAIL
The article below is
part of a yearlong, in-depth series on the U.S. Department of Transportation's
Compliance, Safety, Accountability program that analyzes two full years' worth
of data — December 2010 (the program's beginning) to December 2012. CCJ editors
have built a site dedicated to hosting the stories, interactive maps and
downloadable data at CCJdigital.com/csa.
The largest truck fleets show crash rates well
above that of one-truck carriers, yet the megafleet trucks and drivers are
inspected at only a fourth of the rate of the single-truck operations,
according toCommercial Carrier Journal and Overdrive’s analysis of federal data. Single-truck
independent drivers are 3.5 times more likely to be put out of service than
drivers for carriers with 500 or more trucks.
The
carrier crash data was compiled by CCJ publisher
Randall-Reilly Business Media’s RigDig Business Intelligence unit. It covers the
first two years of the Compliance Safety Accountability program, launched in
December 2010 by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
FMCSA did not respond
to a request for an interview on this topic.
For one-truck
operators, these enforcement disparities entail not simply the day-to-day
hassles of dealing with a well-armed regulatory regime. The bad ratings that
come with violations and out-of-service orders make it increasingly difficult
to secure freight in a safety-scoring landscape tilted in favor of their larger
competitors.
While single-truck operators are the safest,
accident rates – measured per million miles traveled – spike when those
operators start adding trucks. The highest rates were found in fleets of two to
15 trucks. This isn’t surprising, given that fleets in that range often have no
full-time manager – yet alone a full-time safety director – and tend to be less
restrictive in screening prospective drivers.
But at the extreme
ends of carrier size, the disconnect between driver out-of-service rates and
carrier crash rates highlights seemingly intractable problems for small fleets
at roadside, says Richard Wilson, regulatory manager with Trans Products Trans
Services. Wilson believes, as do others, that too many inspectors, as well as
FMCSA investigators, view small fleets as low-hanging fruit. For inspectors,
the small fleets are easy revenue through citations. For investigators, it’s
the numbers game – activity measured by fleet count – public agencies play to
justify their existence.
“It’s much more
efficient to compile large numbers of interventions on smaller carriers that
provide the numbers necessary to meet the standards of the budget offices,”
Wilson says.
The stellar accident
record of one-truck independents, in some sense, is to be expected. “A guy that
owns his own truck has his life savings in that truck” in many cases, says Phil
McGuire, president of Texas-based McGuire Transportation, which has roughly a
100-truck mix of owner-operator and (mostly) company-owned trucks. “He doesn’t
want to put a scratch on it, much less be in an accident.” Managing only
yourself, McGuire adds, “you can do a lot better” keeping a handle on safety.
When carriers of any
size have negative CSA percentile rankings in the public BASICs
(Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories), brokers,
shippers and insurance companies now are more interested. J. Webb Kline, owner
of a Pennsylvania-based six-truck fleet, said in February he’d lost in the
neighborhood of $1.5 million in sales over the past year because brokers
and shippers looked at the fleet’s Hours of Service Compliance BASIC score and
determined it was a high risk.
“Profit from CSA in being able to bid out your
business better – or CSA will profit from you,” says David Saunders, chief
executive officer of Texas-headquartered Compliance Safety Systems, which
administers drug and alcohol screening programs for carriers. “Small and large
carriers will have to defend themselves with customers. Say my [public BASICs]
are high as a small carrier, but I don’t have a high crash rate with DOT
recordables – ‘Why won’t you do business with me?’ ”
The Crash Indicator
BASIC is one where owner-operators, carriers and drivers with a fairly clean
crash history can benefit, says Saunders. That’s often true even for those,
like Kline, with high scores in other BASICs.
The largest
all-leased-owner-operator carrier in the nation, Landstar System, was able to
exploit its Crash Indicator rating, says Joe Beacom, vice president of safety.
In 2012, Landstar Inway – along with Landstar Ranger, one of the company’s
primary truckload fleets – moved above the intervention threshold in the Hours
of Service Compliance BASIC.
That raised concerns
for some shippers and also marked the carrier for federal attention. Landstar
voluntarily began to show shippers its private Crash Indicator percentile
ranking as a way to prove its safety in ways other BASICs didn’t. “It’s 9 or so
– the top 10 percent best in accident frequency in the peer group,” Beacom
said.
Landstar also began
requiring use of electronic onboard recorders for hours monitoring for all new
lessees with Inway and Ranger. This helped turn the scores around and put the
divisions back below threshold.
For small fleets with
a few accidents that were not their fault, however, the opposite of Landstar’s
case may well be true. Independent owner-operator Melvin Davis tells of his
father’s four-truck BMD Inc. fleet, based in Michigan. Despite having a
virtually perfect CSA profile – with none of the five public BASICs registering
any score whatsoever – BMD has seen two accidents associated with one of its
drivers in the past two years.
“Neither one of the
accidents were his fault,” Davis says. “The first one definitely wasn’t, as a
woman spun out on the ice in front of him. The second one was in Indianapolis
on a blind curve” where traffic had stopped unexpectedly. “He was never charged
with the accident,” says Davis.
And yet both accidents
are part of BMD’s Crash Indicator score because there is no accounting for
blame in that scoring.
“If it’s not your
fault, how can you be slammed for it?” Davis asks, reflecting the opinion of
many in the industry.
The conclusion of
FMCSA’s research into whether it can start to account for fault in carrier
crash data is due this year. Speaking to the Maryland Motor Truck Association’s
Western Maryland Chapter in December 2011, FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said
the goal of the research “is to code every interstate motor carrier crash as
either ‘accountable’ or ‘not accountable’ to the motor carrier and the driver.
However, this is an enormous task, and it will take time to implement.” Since
then, Ferro has been less emphatic about the goals of the crash-accountability
study. Other representatives in the agency have started questioning whether
such an accounting is even possible in most cases.
For carriers with
crashes on the record, says Saunders, the other crucial piece of the carrier
self-defense pie relative to CSA is the driver and vehicle out-of-service rate.
“Rather than being hung up on how un-American CSA is and how the federal
government messed up, polish the image of who you are as a company and a
driver,” he says. “Look for a way to position yourself as a driver and as a
company to … be able to tell a shipper or insurance company” you’re dependable.
“If every time I get
in that truck I have a chance of being put out of service because I violated a
rule, that shipper won’t conduct business with me,” Saunders adds. “The
insurance company won’t work with me.”
This article is not necessarily the opinion of this blog's administrator/owner. It is provided as research only.
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III runs the largest media watchdog organization in America. Established in 1987. Web site
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