American Trucking Associations has urged the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to go further in its proposed changes to the Compliance, Safety, and Accountability carrier monitoring system.

The ATA filed its complaints during a comment period for proposed changes to CSA that the FMCSA published in June.

“ATA is grateful that FMCSA has been receptive to the industry’s request that CSA better account for accident exposure and to compare carriers with similar operations,” said Bill Graves, ATA president and CEO. “We are disappointed, though, that the agency is still proposing only minor changes to CSA.”

A DOT-appointed independent review team offered a series of recommendations to reform the program after it found fault with the data the FMCSA uses to compute CSA scores. The independent review team, GAO and Congress all found that CSA scores didn’t reflect the actual future crash risk and were a misleading portrayal of a carrier’s safety record, ATA says.

ATA says it feels that the FMCSA’s proposed changes fell short of the independent review team’s recommendations.

“After having a year to consider the recommendation from the NTSB-requested independent review team to distinguish form and manner violations from those that cause crashes, FMCSA appears to have dismissed it out of hand,” said Rob Abbott, ATA’s vice president of safety policy. “We find this very troubling because the agency is missing an opportunity to improve safety by placing more focus on high-risk carriers.”

ATA’s full public comment can be found here.