FMCSA has suggested switching from a three-tier system to a single rating. (welcomia/Getty Images)
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Facing a dearth of industry input thus far, federal trucking regulators on June 25 held a second public listening session seeking comment on a possible major revision to the motor carrier Safety Fitness Determination method that has been in place since 1991.
In the 10 months that have passed since the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a proposal, just 176 written comments have been submitted. Of those, roughly half were not responsive to the issue; some were general complaints about too much regulation, while others did not offer specific ideas on how to revise the SFD system, said Thomas Liberatore, director of FMCSA’s Office of Enforcement & Compliance. During the 90-minute listening session with top agency compliance officials, there appeared to be little clarity about the advance notice of proposed rulemaking at the center of the proposal.
For its part, the agency has suggested an idea that calls for changing the old three-tiered system that rates carriers as “satisfactory, unsatisfactory and conditional” with a single rating of “unfit” for carriers that fail a compliance investigation.
Part of the reasoning is simplicity; with millions of CDLs issued and tens of thousands of motor carriers registered, the agency can only do a limited number of compliance reviews due to “resource and logistical issues,” Liberatore said. The current SFD process is based on motor carrier data such as a carrier’s out-of-service rate, crash involvement and data collected during an investigation.
The agency has posed a litany of questions to carriers that remain unresolved. Some of them include:
- Should FMCSA retain the old system, and why or why not?
- Should carriers with a successful SFD review have the same SFD rating as carriers without a review?
- Should the agency incorporate the Safety Management System results in a review? If not, should FMCSA include more on-road safety data in other ways?
- Should FMCSA assign more weight (double points) to unsafe driving violations such as speeding and texting while driving?
- Should the agency distinguish between a conviction versus a no-conviction?
Despite the relatively small number of overall comments received, some major trucking organizations have shared their thoughts on the idea of shifting from a the three-tiered system to a single rating.
While it has not opposed the suggested FMCSA plan, American Trucking Associations said that for an SFD to be an accurate representation of a motor carrier’s fitness to operate, determinations must be based on a consistent and uniform data source. On this point, ATA said data sufficiency concerns remain a serious limitation. In addition, ATA expressed concern that under a single-rating plan there would be no means to separate fleets with documented deficiencies — such as those with a conditional rating — from all other fleets not labeled “unfit.”
The Truckload Carriers Association said that adopting a singular “unfit” rating is not optimal for assigning Safety Fitness Ratings. “While the current three-tiered SFD is deemed acceptable, the primary concern is the need for more frequent annual FMCSA visits to carriers,” TCA wrote. “According to the docket, in 2019, the FMCSA and its state partners conducted 11,671 compliance reviews out of a population of more than 567,000 active interstate motor carriers.”
Overall, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance agreed that it is appropriate for FMCSA to move forward with some level of revision to the safety fitness determination process. “Establishing a new methodology for determining a motor carrier’s safety fitness will improve safety and enforcement by helping inspectors identify the motor carriers most in need of intervention,” CVSA wrote. “The current system can be misleading and should be simplified for clarity.”
National Tank Truck Carrier members support retaining the current three-tiered rating system. “Tank truck carriers feel that fellow carriers, shippers and insurance companies all use these classifications to adequately assess risk,” it wrote. “The proposal to replace the three-tiered structure with a single ‘unfit’ rating would not be sufficient to effectively measure safety.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said it “supports this initiative but remains concerned with the sluggish pace of the FMCSA’s efforts to develop a robust SFD process that will effectively use FMCSA data and resources to identify unsafe motor carriers and remove them from our nation’s roadways.” It added, “For more than two decades, the NTSB has repeatedly issued recommendations to address the safety deficiencies with the FMCSA’s compliance review program and has called for SFD rulemaking to address this critical need.”