The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is making some changes in the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program it will roll out next month.

The agency announced yesterday that based on feedback from the industry and the enforcement community, it is going to address concerns about how the system evaluates carriers in the Cargo-Related safety category,

which measures compliance with load securement procedures and hazardous materials requirements. It also said it will change the severity weighting in that category.

FMCSA acknowledged concerns that the Cargo-Related category over-represents certain industry segments and creates a potentially misleading safety alert. It said it will fix the problem by adjusting the severity weights.

The agency also is looking into the impact on different industry segments of a carrier's exposure in this category. Pending completion of that study, the agency will withhold carriers' performance percentiles and intervention status from the public. The data still will be available to the carrier and enforcement personnel.

Another change concerns the way the agency displays data in the CSA Safety Management System. The agency will no longer use the term "deficient" to identify a score that triggers an intervention. Instead, it will say "alert."

The intent is to clarify that percentiles above the intervention threshold indicate that the carrier is in line for intervention, and do not imply that safety fitness has been determined already.

The changes were applauded by American Trucking Associations.

"ATA continues to support the objectives of CSA 2010, FMCSA's safety monitoring and measurement program, and we are pleased with the Agency's decision to continue working on its Cargo-Related BASIC to get it right before it's made public," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves in a statement.

The agency is strongly encouraging carriers who have not done so to go to the CSA 2010 web site to review their safety data.


More info: http://csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov.