The American Trucking Assns. (ATA) this week released its position paper on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Motor Carrier Safety Status Measurement System (SafeStat).

Saying that while the SafeStat system is an improvement over past enforcement resource allocation systems at the federal level, ATA said it contains significant problems and material weaknesses as communicated in a recent report issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).
As a result of the OIG report, ATA said it "strongly recommends that motor carrier to motor carrier comparisons should not be made by members of the public using SafeStat scores, nor should business decisions be based upon or made using SafeStat scores, or on the underlying data."
ATA said the significant problems with the SafeStat system outlined in the OIG report underscore the unreliability of its scores and data.
Below are several of the findings -- and comments -- contained in the Inspector General’s report:
-- Out-of-date and unreliable carrier information, incomplete data on crashes and serious moving traffic violations, untimely reporting of crashes and inspection data, and errors in the crash and inspection reporting process.
-- The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act required interstate motor carriers to periodically update their identification report filed with FMCSA, but many still do not.
-- Adding to the data problems created by insufficient census data is significant crash information also missing from the states.
-- Missing crash data were most significant with six states failing to report any crashes for the six months analyzed.
-- "Although the rate of state inspection reporting was better than crash reporting, we found it was also a problem -- as with crashes, the states reported these occurrences incompletely and inconsistently."
-- "We estimated that errors occurred in approximately 13% of the crash transactions and 7% of the inspection transactions reported."
-- "Missing, incomplete, or untimely safety event data may cause public Internet users, who rely on specific rankings, to make incorrect decisions."
-- "Although we support SafeStat’s continued use as an internal risk management tool, the types and magnitude of data problems we found argue for immediate and effective action to correct data problems. The most serious concern is the continued public dissemination of motor carrier rankings for the accident evaluation area given the incompleteness of crash data."
ATA said the FMCSA has taken a number of positive steps to improve the system since issuance of the OIG report, including implementation of a new data correction system called DataQs. The FMCSA also recently announced its intent to temporarily remove the accident scores and the overall SafeStat scores from its web site until the agency is assured that the supporting data is more timely, complete and accurate.
ATA said it commends the agency for this decision, and for its numerous actions to improve the system.
"ATA is committed to working with FMCSA, the states and the trucking industry as a whole to improve the safety event data and motor carrier census data captured as part of the SafeStat system, as well as assisting in the improvement and validation of the scoring formulas and overall system methodology," the report said.