There are a number of changes coming to CSA.
On July 16th, FMCSA published in the Federal Register a notice announcing the withdrawal of proposed enhancements to the Safety Management System (SMS). The proposed changes were originally announced in June of 2015 and October of 2016. The proposed changes included a public preview version which included adjustments to the intervention thresholds for several of the BASICs; changes to the hazardous materials compliance BASIC; changes to where violating an out-of-service order is included in the BASICs; adjustments of the utilization factor used to calculate the unsafe driving and crash indicator BASICs; changes to data sufficiency standards for the crash indicator BASIC; and changes to assigning percentiles to carriers in the HOS, vehicle maintenance, hazardous materials, and driver fitness BASICs only if an inspection occurred in the last year as compared to the current two year time period. The preview site has been removed, and FMCSA has indicated they will not, at this time, proceed with these previously proposed changes.
On the same day, FMCSA published their long awaited Corrective Action Plan Report to Congress which responds to the recommendations made in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, required by the FAST Act. The corrective action plan responds to each of the 6 recommendations made in the NAS report, and provides a potential plan of action for each. FMCSA accepted the NAS report’s recommendations, including the recommendations to develop a new statistical model to support the SMS, and stated they are working to implement the recommended changes. The NAS report cautioned the FMCSA against making changes to the algorithm based on ad hoc analysis and instead urged FMCSA to rely on the Item Response Theory (IRT) model.
FMCSA further announced they will be holding public meetings to further engage the industry on the redevelopment of CSA/SMS. Zonar intends on being part of these meetings to ensure that it continues to be at the ready for customers compliance needs.
