FMSCA Announces Enhancements to Its Carrier Safety Management System

Background

The SMS is part of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program developed in 2010 to help the FMCSA identify high-risk motor carriers based on inspections and enforcement actions. The program calculates scores in different safety categories that are based on safety data. These safety categories were known as the Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs).

On Feb. 15, 2023, the FMCSA proposed changes to its SMS in response to comments it had received regarding accurately identifying unsafe motor carriers. The FMCSA provided the following 12 changes and announced a 90-day preview and comment period for stakeholders:

1.       Changing “BASICs/Safety categories” to “compliance categories”;

2.       Revising the unsafe driving category;

3.       Reorganizing vehicle maintenance;

4.       Segmenting driver fitness and hazardous materials (HM) compliance categories;

5.       Consolidating violations;

6.       Simplifying violation severity weights;

7.       Moving from safety event groups to proportionate percentiles;

8.       Improving intervention thresholds;

9.       Focusing on recent violations;

10.    Updating utilization factors;

11.    Reorganizing violations; and

12.    Increasing SMS updates.

During the 90-day preview and comment period (which ended on May 16, 2023), the FMCSA created a new Prioritization Preview website that allows motor carriers to see what their scores would be under the new system.

Following the comment period, the FMCSA has continued to make the prioritization preview site available to industry and other safety stakeholders so they have ample time to review and understand the impacts of the enhancements. 

SMS Methodology Enhancements

The FMCSA has published this notice in response to the comments it received concerning its proposed changes. The following is the SMS methodology that was changed by the FMCSA based on its analysis and the comments it received:

Changing “BASICs/Safety Categories” to “Compliance Categories”

The FMCSA’s analysis demonstrated a strong relationship between each BASIC or category and safety. However, the FMCSA stated it acknowledged the public comments and decided to move forward with “compliance categories” instead of “safety categories” because it is simpler and more relatable terminology. It also allows motor carriers’ operations and the enforcement community to pinpoint and address compliance concerns accurately.

Unsafe Driving Category Revision

The “Unsafe Driving Safety” category is now the “Unsafe Driving Compliance” category and incorporates controlled substances/alcohol (CS/A) violations and all operating out-of-service violations. The sparsity of CS/A violations inhibited the CS/A BASIC’s ability to identify high-crash-risk carriers. By integrating CS/A violations into the new Unsafe Driving Compliance Category, the FMCSA states it will continue to hold carriers and drivers accountable for drug and alcohol compliance while focusing its investigative resources on carriers with higher crash rates.

Vehicle Maintenance Reorganization

The FMCSA reorganized vehicle maintenance into two categories:

1.       “Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed” (new); and

2.       “Vehicle Maintenance.”

Commenters emphasized that the FMCSA’s new Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed category more accurately reflects how carriers perform maintenance and assess compliance. Commenters think this new category could potentially protect drivers from being held responsible for violations that they could not have discovered during a pre-trip inspection.

New Segmentation: Driver Fitness and HM Compliance Categories

The FMCSA segmented the Driver Fitness Compliance category by straight truck and combination carriers and segmented the HM Compliance category by cargo tank and noncargo tank carriers. The FMCSA states that the HM Compliance category focuses solely on the portion of a carrier’s operation that is hauling HM, and whether the carrier frequently or rarely hauls HM should not have an impact on the carrier’s ability to comply with the HM Regulations.

The FMCSA states that straight and combination segmentation would work the same way for the Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator BASICs in the current SMS. A carrier’s designation of straight or combination in the Driver Fitness Compliance category depends on the percentage of those types of vehicles in its operations. The FMCSA provides the following table: 

Consolidated Violations

To streamline the SMS system, the FMCSA is consolidating the current 959 roadside violations into 116 violation groups. This reorganization aims to make the system more user-friendly for carriers and stakeholders while promoting consistency in enforcing violations with similar safety concerns.

The FMCSA evaluated the effectiveness of these proposed changes against the current SMS and found that they would result in a 3% increase in the number of carriers flagged for intervention. Additionally, this newly prioritized group would have a crash rate 10% higher than those identified under the current system.

The FMCSA stated it agrees with commenters that there are still areas of overlap between the “Hours of Service (HOS) Requirements” and “HOS Requirements—Nominal” and the “Brakes” and “Brakes—Out of Service (OOS)” violation groups, but the FMCSA consolidated these overlapping violation groups to further prevent inconsistencies in how violations are cited for the same underlying safety issue. 

Simplified Violation Severity Weights The FMCSA is proposing to move from a 1 to 10 scale for violation severity weights to a simplified 1 or 2, with higher weights for OOS violations and severe infractions. There were concerns by commenters that changing this to a 1 or 2 weight scale is too simplified, but they agreed with the FMCSA moving away from the 1-10 weight scale.

The FMCSA stated in response that its analysis shows that assigning a customized weight to all violations was not as important as noting that the violation occurred. The number of violations a carrier has is a strong indicator of its safety compliance or lack thereof. Carriers with poor safety management practices have patterns of violations across the compliance categories—regardless of each violation’s level of egregiousness. Conversely, carriers with strong safety management practices have fewer violations per inspection. In addition, moving toward a simplified scale for severity weights does not inhibit SMS from identifying carriers with high crash rates.

Proportionate Percentiles

The FMCSA is replacing the use of “safety event groups,” which was previously used to group similar carriers in the SMS, with a new approach that calculates “proportional percentiles” to eliminate large percentile changes that occur for nonsafety-related reasons.

Improved Intervention Thresholds

The FMCSA is making changes to the Intervention Thresholds for Vehicle Maintenance, Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed, Driver Fitness, and Hazardous Materials Compliance Categories.

The FMCSA supports its decision through analysis, which showed that every category has a different relationship to the crash rate, with some having a higher correlation than others. The FMCSA states that adjusting the thresholds ensures it focuses its enforcement program on carriers with the highest crash risk. In addition, the Driver Fitness and HM Compliance Categories can help carriers identify and improve patterns of noncompliance that contribute to their companies’ overall safety, regardless of whether the carriers are over the threshold in these categories.

Greater Focus on Recent Violations

The FMCSA will calculate percentiles only for carriers with cited violations in the past 12 months. This change applies to the HOS, Vehicle Maintenance, Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed, HM Compliance and Driver Fitness Compliance categories.

The FMCSA states the purpose of this change is to account for smaller carriers that have not received inspections with violations in the past 12 months, thereby focusing its enforcement efforts on those with more recent safety issues. In addition, under the current SMS, there is no need for a percentile exemption or adjustment for carriers that receive more frequent inspections. When frequently inspected carriers have a relatively small number of violations per inspection, they will have a low percentile reflecting better than average compliance and thus not be subject to prioritization.

Updated Utilization Factor

The FMCSA is extending the utilization factor from carriers that drive up to 200,000 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per average PU to carriers that drive up to 250,000 VMT per average PU. The FMCSA states that higher utilization carriers that drive between 200,000 and 250,00 VMT per average PU still exist, and the updated utilization factor is designed to account for them.

The current utilization factor uses a carrier’s VMT per average number of PUs, or vehicles, to account for different levels of on-road exposure to inspections and crashes.

Reorganizing Violations

The FMCSA made other changes to the SMS that reorganized violations. Some of the current violations were reclassified to better align with their root safety issues. The FMCSA moved violation 390.3E from Unsafe Driving to Driver Fitness and added 392.15 to Driver Fitness to reflect the root of the underlying safety issue more accurately.

Violations 390.3E and 392.15 both relate to operating a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) while prohibited from performing safety-sensitive functions per § 382.501(a) in the FMCSA’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse. Since these violations address whether a driver meets drug and alcohol requirements to perform safety-sensitive functions, these violations are more closely aligned with the Driver Fitness Compliance category. The Driver Fitness Compliance category covers driver requirements for the safe operation of CMVs, including training, experience, licensing and medical qualifications.

To further prevent inconsistencies that occur when multiple violations are cited for a similar underlying issue, the FMCSA made additional changes to the violation groups HOS and Vehicle Maintenance Compliance categories. The FMCSA moved HOS violations from the HOS Requirements—Nominal violation group to the HOS Requirements group.

In addition, the FMCSA consolidated the single Vehicle Maintenance violation in the Brakes—OOS violation group under the Brakes group.

SMS Update Frequency

Currently, the FMCSA updates the SMS website once a month with SMS results for motor carriers. Complete prioritization results are available to motor carriers and enforcement personnel who are logged in to the SMS website. Logged-in motor carriers can only view their own data, while logged-in enforcement users can view safety data for all carriers.

The FMCSA states it will continue to calculate the SMS results monthly, but in alignment with its commitment to continuous improvement, it is exploring the feasibility and impacts of providing more frequent updates to the inspection and crash data that are displayed on the SMS website. The FMCSA will share its decision and supporting findings in the follow-up notice announcing the enhanced SMS methodology.

Next Steps

Motor carriers and drivers should make sure they review these changes and how these changes affect their operations. They should also make sure to watch for more information concerning these changes from the FMCSA. The FMCSA states that more information, including a webinar series addressing the changes, will be available on the prioritization preview website in the coming months. The agency also states there will be a follow-up notice published in the Federal Register that provides the launch date of the enhanced SMS website. 

This Legal Update is not intended to be exhaustive nor should any discussion or opinions be construed as legal advice. Readers should contact legal counsel for legal advice. © 2024 Zywave, Inc. All rights reserved. 

'