FMCSA Announces Pending Changes to CSA Program

On August 24, 2012, the Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently announced various changes to its "Compliance, Safety, Accountability" (CSA) program. Most notably, the FMCSA plans to make several key improvements to its Carrier Safety Measurement System (SMS), known as "BASICs", which will go into effect this December.

They include:

• Strengthening the "Vehicle Maintenance" BASIC by moving cargo/load securement violations from the "Cargo-Related" BASIC to the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC.
• Renaming the "Cargo-Related" BASIC the "HM" BASIC (which stands for "Hazardous Materials") to better identify HM-related safety and compliance problems.
• Better Align the SMS with the Intermodal Equipment Provider (IEP) regulations.
• Aligning violations that are included in SMS with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) inspection levels by eliminating the vehicle violations derived from driver-only inspections and driver violations from vehicle-only inspections.
• Improving the identification of passenger carriers; and
• Modifying the SMS website display by changing current terminology and make the distinguish between crashes with injuries and crashes with fatalities. For example: "Insufficient Data" and "Inconclusive", to fact based definitions that clarify the carrier's status in each BASIC.

Along with these SMS-specific changes, FMCSA has identified four other changes that will take effect in September, including:

• Removing 1-to-5 mph speeding violations;
• Lowering the severity weight for speeding violations that do not designate MPH range above the speed limit;
• Aligning paper and electronic logbook violations; and
• Changing the name of the "Fatigued Driving Hours-of-Service (HOS)" BASIC to the "HOS Compliance" BASICImproving the identification of passenger carriers.