FMCSA Considers Changing Safety Rating System
Jack Van Steenburg, the Assistant Administrator and Chief Safety Officer of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) during the Trump Administration, pointed out a very interesting statistic when speaking at the Heavy Duty Trucking Exchange: despite there being 750,000 motor carriers within the United States, only about 19,000 (or 3%) have gone through the motions of applying for a safety rating and receiving a Satisfactory rating. While this is a boon for those who put in the effort to work with the FMCSA, it leaves potential customers in the dark for how safe a fleet is for the majority of them in the nation. The FMCSA wants to change that.
Details
The way it is now, a trucking company needs to make the active decision for the FMCSA to rate them as Satisfactory, including submitting all of the relevant paperwork. Instead, the FMCSA is considering switching to an “until proven otherwise” system, where every fleet is deemed in good standing until enough data shows that they are not.
“From what I see, they want to use your roadside inspection data in future ratings,” Van Steenburg said about this development.
Implications
Having a system of defaulting as a pass or being labeled as a failure sounds like a good idea on paper, but it ultimately also leads to fleets that are average and those that are exceptional being in the same category. It might be a better solution for the FMCSA to add another rating, such as “Excellent”, if a fleet consistently passes safety ratings with flying colors. This would allow the trucking company to advertise their high commitment to safety to its customers without having to jump through a bunch of hoops.
Conclusion
At this point, the rulemaking for changes to safety compliance processing is still in its infancy. It will be interesting to see what direction the FMCSA takes with safety ratings, since it seems to believe that the current system of volunteering only emboldens the reckless from simply not applying to avoid an Unsatisfactory rating, and requiring everyone to undergo safety compliance checks would put a great strain on the FMCSA’s resources.
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