In response to prodding by American Trucking Associations, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it will release a study of the links between violations and crash risk that it uses in the CSA safety enforcement system.


ATA had pushed to see the study so carriers and shippers could get a better understanding of CSA.

ATA said the agency has denied several requests for the study, but last week the agency said in a statement that it will make the study available on the CSA docket on the agency website "in the coming days."

The agency used the study, "2007 Violation Severity Assessment Study Final Report," to develop the severity weights in CSA, which are assigned to all violations on a scale of one to 10 based on their relationship to crash occurrence and consequences, ATA said.

There have been questions about the severity weightings that the study may help answer.

The Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee, a group of stakeholders appointed by the agency to advise on regulatory and program matters, has said that because it did not have the study its analysis of the severity weights was based on guesswork, ATA said.

And a 2011 evaluation of CSA by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute described the assignment of severity weights as arbitrary, ATA said.