Since the 1970s, Federal and State enforcement agencies in partnership with many
other stakeholders have progressively reduced the rate of commercial vehicle crashes
resulting in injuries or fatalities on our Nation’s highways.
The rate of crash reduction has slowed, prompting FMCSA to take a fresh look at
how the agency evaluates the safety of motor carriers and drivers and to explore
ways to improve its safety monitoring, evaluation, and intervention processes. CSA
2010 is the result of this comprehensive examination.
Limitations of the current Operational Model
FMCSA's compliance and safety programs improve and promote safety performance and
save lives. However, agency resources available for these efforts have remained
relatively constant over time, despite increases in the regulated population and
additional programmatic responsibilities. FMCSA has identified limitations in both
how safety is measured and how unsafe behaviors, once identified, are corrected.
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FMCSA's current compliance review (CR) program is resource-intensive and
reaches only a small percentage of motor carriers, making it increasingly difficult
to continue to improve motor carrier safety using existing tools.
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On-site CRs to determine a motor carrier's safety fitness require an average
of three to four days to complete. At present staffing levels, FMCSA can perform
CRs on only a small number of the 700,000 active interstate motor carriers.
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SafeStat is FMCSA’s current system for measuring safety performance. Despite
its effectiveness SafeStat groups safety problems together to identify carriers
for a one-size-fits-all CR. It also does not focus on the behaviors known to cause
crashes.
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The FMCSA Large Truck Crash Causation Study
indicates that increased attention should be given to drivers of commercial vehicles.
CSA 2010 builds on FMCSA’s current processes for assessing and improving the safety
performance of motor carriers and drivers through a new safety measurement system
and a new suite of tools. These include an enhanced CR, in addition to more focused
and efficient interventions tailored to address specific problems.