Arlington, VA – The American Trucking Associations released a white paper (.pdf file) on June 20 urging the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to focus on preventing commercial motor vehicle crashes, injuries and fatalities when making upcoming revisions to the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.
Rob Abbott, ATA’s vice president of safety policy, said in the white paper that the program appears to be “placing an emphasis on compliance with regulations.” One of the program’s seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories – Driver Fitness (.pdf file) – is only able to identify carriers with “patterns of violations” and not future crash risk, he said.
Abbott stated that FMCSA should acknowledge the limitations of CSA and not introduce a planned hazardous materials BASIC that FMCSA said does not predict future crash risk.
