Among the good news in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposed revisions to its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program is that the agency intends to expand its Crash Preventability Determination Program. Under that program, motor carriers can submit a Request for Data Review (an RDR) to FMCSA’s DataQs program, asserting that a crash was not preventable by the motor carrier or the truck driver.
Since the program started in May 2020, motor carriers have submitted such requests just over 39,000 times. Nearly 73 percent of those submitted crashes fell within the 16 categories of crashes eligible for review. Once those requests were reviewed, FMCSA determined that 96 percent were non-preventable by FMCSA, meaning that those crashes were not counted against the motor carrier or truck driver under the CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS).
Now FMCSA is looking to clarify those 16 categories of eligible crashes and to add four new categories:
ICSA is preparing comments in support of the crash preventability proposal to be submitted by the June 12, 2023 due date and we encourage members to file their own comments in support of the proposal. After reviewing the comments, FMCSA will make necessary adjustments to the DataQs program and announce a start date for the expanded Crash Preventability Determination Program.
Every year, TAT (formerly called Truckers Against Trafficking) honors a member of the trucking, bus or energy industry, whose direct actions help save or improve the lives of those exploited or prevent human trafficking from taking place, with the Harriet Tubman Award
Bob Costello has indicated that the freight market has improved – but very slowly – since January. It must be said that ATA’s indices are dominated by contract freight as opposed to spot rates.
Now, however, with Republican control of both houses of Congress and the White House (and, some say, the Supreme Court) I am optimistic that trucking will get a fairer shake than it has during Biden’s term in office.