In response to pressure from the industry, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is changing the online system it uses to rate the safety performance of trucking companies.

Right now, the ratings are posted online at the agency’s web site and are available to anyone. The information is important to truck lines because the agency uses it to determine which companies it should investigate, and private interests such as insurance firms and shippers use it in making business decisions.
Problem is, the system is flawed. In a recent investigation, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found that the data needs to be more accurate, complete and timely if it is going to be available to the public. The investigation was ordered by Congress following complaints by trucking interests.
The safety agency, which has acknowledged that the system has shortcomings, said last week that it is going to take some of the data off of the public site over the next several months. It already has made other changes, including a new system intended to make it easier for trucking companies to fix mistakes in the data, and a map indicating which states do a good job of reporting their data, and which do not.
The rating system is called SafeStat, short for Safety Status Measurement System (http://ai.volpe.dot.gov). It gives each company a national ranking based on its accident history, the performance of its drivers, the condition of its vehicles and the quality of its safety management program. Each of these four areas is scored separately, and those scores are weighted for an overall score. Data for this evaluation comes from state reports about accidents, moving violations and roadside inspections, and formal safety inspections, called compliance reviews.
The agency contends -- and the Inspector General acknowledged -- that despite SafeStat’s flaws it does provide value. In a validation study cited by the Inspector General, carriers identified by SafeStat as being in a high-risk category had significantly higher accident rates. That study needs to be updated, but it is convincing, the Inspector General said.
But because some of the data is inaccurate or incomplete, the Inspector General said he was seriously concerned that it is posted on the web site for anyone to see. “The types and magnitude of data problems we found argue for immediate and effective action,” the Inspector General said last March.
In the most significant change to SafeStat, the agency is removing both the accident evaluation score and the overall SafeStat score from the web site. The accident scores are being removed because they rely on state-provided crash reports, “which are sometimes not of the highest quality data,” said agency administrator Annette Sandberg in a statement last week. The overall score is being removed because it is determined, in part, by the accident score.
Carriers will still be able to access their accident and overall scores, as will agency and state enforcement personnel. The other three scores will remain posted on the website -- because the underlying data is more timely and accurate, Sandberg said.
The agency will restore the accident and overall scores to public view “when we are confident that the information provided is more reliable,” Sandberg said.
In another move, the safety agency posted a caution on the web site, warning viewers that SafeStat should be used carefully. “Please be aware that use of SafeStat for purposes other than identifying and prioritizing carriers for FMCSA and state safety improvement and enforcement programs may produce unintended results,” the warning says.
The agency also has instituted a new system called DataQs, which gives carriers a mechanism for filing their concerns about their data. Much of the data that goes into a carrier’s ranking comes from states, and carriers have found that if that data is incorrect they often have a hard time getting it fixed -- DataQs is supposed to correct that.
The map on the web site reflects a rating system the agency has started applying to the states. Each state is rated, good, fair or poor, depending on the timeliness, completeness and accuracy of its inspection and crash data.
States also are being called to account in another way: The agency is requiring them to describe their data collection and improvement plans whenever they apply for federal funds to support their enforcement efforts.


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