Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 (CSA 2010)

A number of employers have raised questions and concerns related to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 (CSA 2010) initiative and its impact on the highway industry. A lot of confusion, misinformation, and misconception abounds and is causing anxiety for many employers.

Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 is a new FMCSA safety program to improve large truck and bus safety and ultimately reduce crashes. It introduces a new enforcement and compliance model that allows FMCSA and its state partners to contact a larger number of carriers earlier in order to address safety problems before crashes occur.

CSA 2010 replaces SafeStat with a new Safety Measurement System (SMS) that measures the previous two years of roadside violations and crash data. With SMS, every inspection counts, not just out-of-service violations, and both driver and carrier safety performance are monitored.
CSA 2010 is currently being tested in six states. When CSA 2010 is fully implemented by the end of 2010, SMS will replace the Safety Status (SafeStat) measurement system as FMCSA’s tool to identify high-risk motor carriers requiring interventions in order to improve safety on the Nation’s roads. SMS will evaluate the safety of individual motor carriers by considering all safety-based roadside inspection violations, not just out-of service violations, as well as State-reported crashes, using 24 months of performance data. SMS will assess each carrier’s safety performance in each of the Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs): Unsafe Driving, Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service), Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Cargo-Related, and Crash Indicator. SMS calculates a measure for each BASIC by combining the time and severity weighted violations/crashes (more recent violations are weighted more heavily) normalized by exposure (e.g. number of power units or number of relevant inspections). Applying a similar approach to that used in SafeStat, SMS converts each carrier’s BASIC measures into percentiles based on rank relative to peers. SMS will be updated monthly.

There are six important differences between the new Safety Measurement System (SMS) and the current measurement system, SafeStat:
1. SMS is organized by seven specific behaviors (BASICs) while SafeStat is organized into four broad Safety Evaluation Areas (SEAs).
2. SMS identifies safety performance problems to determine the intervention level while SafeStat identifies carriers for a compliance review.
3. SMS emphasizes on-road performance using all safety-based inspection violations while SafeStat uses only out-of-service and selected moving violations.
4. SMS uses risk-based violation weightings while SafeStat does not.
5. SMS will eventually be used to propose adverse safety fitness determination based on a carrier’s own data while SafeStat has no impact on an entity’s safety fitness rating.
6. SMS provides a tool that allows investigators to identify drivers with safety problems during carrier investigations.

A carrier who fails an audit is notified within 45 days and given 60 days to correct the problem or lose its operating authority. Passenger carriers and hazmat haulers are given only 45 days to correct violations.

Under the new rules a carrier automatically fails if an auditor finds a single occurrence of these violations. FMCSA looked back at audits conducted in a recent five year period and estimated that 47.9% would have been failures under the new rules. Since about 40,000 audits are done each year, that means more than 19,000 Motor Carriers could now fail annually. “One would not necessarily expect such a high failure rate to persist after the rule is implemented,” FMCSA noted in a December 2008 Federal Register notice. “Upon implementation of this rule, many carriers will take the appropriate action to pass the stricter new entrant safety audit, and the actual failure rate will be significantly lower.”

Safety regulations that are being called the “15 deadly sins” that will result in failure of a motor carrier entrant audit:
1. Failing to implement an alcohol and/or controlled substances testing program.
2. Using a driver who has refused to submit to an alcohol or controlled substances test required under Part 382.
3. Using a driver known to have tested positive for a controlled substance.
4. Failing to implement a random controlled substances and/or alcohol testing program.
5. Knowingly using a driver who does not possess a valid CDL.
6. Knowingly allowing, requiring, permitting, or authorizing an employee with a commercial driver’s license which is suspended, revoked, or canceled by a state or who is disqualified to operate a commercial motor vehicle.
7. Knowingly allowing, requiring, permitting, or authorizing a driver to drive who is disqualified to drive a commercial motor vehicle.
8. Operating a motor vehicle without having in effect the required minimum levels of financial responsibility coverage.
9. Operating a passenger carrying vehicle without having in effect the required minimum levels of financial responsibility coverage.
10. Knowingly using a disqualified driver.
11. Knowingly using a physically unqualified driver.
12. Failing to require a driver to make a record of duty status.
13. Requiring or permitting the operation of a commercial motor vehicle declared "out-of-service" before repairs are made.
14. Failing to correct out-of-service defects listed by driver in a driver vehicle inspection report before the vehicle is operated again.
15. Using a commercial motor vehicle not periodically inspected.

There are five important differences between CSA 2010 interventions and FMCSA’s current compliance review (CR):
1. CSA 2010 provides a set of tools to address carriers' safety problems; the CR is a one-size-fits all tool.
2. CSA 2010 interventions provide the ability to focus on specific safety problems while the CR requires a broad examination of the carrier.
3. CSA 2010 interventions focus on improving behaviors that are linked to crash risk; CR is focused on broad compliance based on a set of acute/critical violations.
4. CSA 2010 focused onsite investigations and offsite investigations are less resource intensive and less time consuming for the carrier; CRs are resource intensive.
5. CSA 2010 investigations may take place at a carrier’s place of business or offsite; CRs are generally conducted onsite
Under CSA 2010, all carriers--and eventually all drivers--with sufficient safety data available will receive a safety rating that is periodically updated. CSA 2010 intends to use new data--such as information from police accident reports about driver-related factors contributing to a crash--and improve existing data sources--by, for example, using its database of licensed commercial drivers to identify all drivers with convictions for unsafe driving practices, as well as the carriers they work for--to enable a more precise assessment of safety problems.

Below are three actions that a carrier can do to prepare for CSA 2010:
Check and update your records: Ensure your Motor Carrier Census Form (MCS-150) is up-to-date and accurate. Routinely monitor and review inspection and crash data (http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov or through FMCSA’s Portal).

Maintain copies of inspection reports and evidence related to any observed violations, identify and address trends or patterns in your company, and challenge any potentially incorrect data using DataQs(https://dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov/login.asp). FMCSA is currently exploring the option of providing motor carriers the ability to review their own safety performance data by Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) prior to the Safety Management System (SMS) launch; stay tuned for forthcoming information on this topic, www.csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov.

Visit the CSA 2010 Website: FMCSA regularly updates materials on the CSA 2010 website -www.csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov. You will find explanations, answers to questions, tips, and guidance. You can sign up for an email subscription or RSS feed to receive the most up-to-date information. You can also submit questions and review a full set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Be sure to review the materials about SMS and the new BASICs – understanding the new SMS is an important step in preparing for CSA 2010. Carriers will be able to preview their SMS data in the near future and they should take advantage of this opportunity. Monitoring the CSA 2010 Website will alert carriers to when and where the preview will be available.
Ensure compliance: Review your inspection and violation history for the past two years. Identify patterns, trends, and areas needing improvement and begin to address these now. Examine your business processes to determine how they may be contributing to any safety compliance problems. Take steps to increase your drivers’ awareness that inspections are more important than ever, that all violations count, not just Out-of-Service violations, and that their performance directly impacts their driving records and the safety assessment of their employing carrier.