Although the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched a demonstration program last summer that invited motor carriers to request a data review of certain non-preventable crashes, only now is the agency releasing “additional information to help submitters and other interested parties understand the demonstration program.”

The crash-preventability demo program began accepting requests for data review (RDRs) on August 1, 2017, for crashes that occurred on or after June 1, 2017. The agency proposed that a crash challenged through an RDR would be found “not preventable” when documentation submitted with the RDR established that the crash was, indeed, not preventable.

In its July 27, 2017 Federal Register notice announcing it would accept the RDRs, FMCSA said it would accept RDRs “to evaluate the preventability of certain categories of crashes” through its DataQs national data-correction system. More specifically, the agency proposed that a crash challenged through an RDR would be found “not preventable” when documentation submitted with the RDR established that the crash was, indeed, not preventable.

Now, per a notice published in the Federal Register for Feb. 7, the agency stated that over 2,500 RDRs have been submitted and that, “based on the experiences operating the program for the first few months,” the agency has identified areas of the program “requiring more instruction and details” including how to correctly submitting eligible crashes to the demonstration program; which specific types of crashes will be reviewed using the RDR process, and the importance of submitting all relevant evidence “in support of the preventability determination” being sought.

In addition to the all the details clarifying how to submit RDRs given within the latest Federal Register notice, the agency noted that additional information on how to submit a crash preventability RDR is available on the FMCSA website for the crash-preventability demo program.

Related: FMCSA to Let Carriers Dispute Crash Fault