CSA - New Warining Letter Tipsheet Now Available!!!

The FMCSA sends warning letters to motor carriers whose safety performance data indicates that they are not complying with the applicable regulations. Warning letters are often the first step in the intervention process. Below, some helpful information on these letters, and tips on how to take action to improve your safety operations.

So, what exactly is a warning letter?
A warning letter is a correspondence sent by the FMCSA to a motor carrier’s place of business that highlights the BASICs that are assigned with an “alert”, or safety compliance problem. The letter outlines the possible consequences of persistent safety problems, and also provides instructions for accessing motor carrier safety data in the SMS system, as well as a point of contact if additional information is needed.

Why would a carrier get a warning letter?
Safety performance data shows whether a motor carrier is operating in full compliance with all applicable FMCSA safety regulations. Based on the data, the warning letter will list BASICs where the motor carrier’s on-road performance over the past 24 months indicates safety issues. The letter further encourages the motor carrier to look at its safety performance data online.

How do you respond if you receive a letter?
Motor carriers who receive warning letters should review their safety data in order to develop and execute strategies the will make their operations compliant with safety regulations. Continued poor performance may lead to more intensive interventions. Motor carrier are not required to write a response to the FMCSA when they receive a warning letter.

Need some tips on how to move forward with the CSA, and reduce the likelihood of getting a warning letter?

Tip #1 – Check your data
Log in to the FMCSA Portal to review your data, ensure data accuracy, and examine violation types.

Tip #2 – Understand your Safety Assessment – Percentiles and Alerts
Percentiles – The SMS calculates a measure for each of the BASICs . The measure is used to assign a ranking or percentile that allows the safety behavior of a carrier to be compared with the safety behavior of other motor carriers with similar operations and numbers of safety events. For more in SMS calculations and methodologies, visit http://csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov/documents/smsmethodology.pdf. Percentile thresholds have been established to indicate when safety compliance problems require intervention:

- Unsafe Driving, Fatigued Driving, Crash Indicator: General-65%; HAZMAT-60%; Passenger-50%

- Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Cargo: General-80%; HAZMAT-60%; Passenger-65%

Alerts – You can receive an alert on a BASIC in two ways. The On-Road column lists the motor carrier’s percentile for each BASIC. If the percentile is over the established intervention threshold, the percentile is presented with an orange outline around the percentile. The Investigation column displays the “Serious Violation Found” icon for a BASIC if a serious violation was cited during an investigation within 12months of the SMS results date. The icon will remain present for 12 months following an investigation regardless of whether corrective actions have occurred.

Tip #3 – Improve Safety Now!
Conduct detailed data analysis, address safety issues, and periodically review SMS data.
Remember, motor carriers that do not improve their safety may be subject to more intensive interventions such as full or focused compliance reviews!!!

If you would like to obtain the full copy of the “FMCSA Warning Letter: TIPSHEET”, visit http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/Documents/WarningLetterTipsheet.pdf.

Do you have any CSA experiences or tips of your own? What are your opinions of the new system?

New CSA 2010 Program Launched

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has officially launched the CSA 2010 program. The program will now be referred to simply as the CSA (Compliance Safety Accountability) program, and will drop the 2010.

As we have reviewed in previous blog postings, the cornerstone of CSA is the Safety Measurement System (SMS), which will analyze all safety-based violations from inspections and crash data to determine a commercial motor carrier's on-road performance. The new safety program will allow FMCSA to reach more carriers earlier and deploy a range of corrective interventions to address a carrier company's specific safety issues.

The CSA program also advances the Obama Administration's open government initiative by providing the public with safety data in a more user-friendly format. This will give consumers a better picture of those carriers that pose a safety risk. CSA was also rolled out and tested in 9 pilot states before the program was launched nationwide.


The SMS uses seven safety improvement categories called BASICS to examine a carrier's on-road performance and crash risk potential. Once again for review, the BASICs are Unsafe Driving, Fatigued Driving (Hours-of-Service), Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Cargo-Related, Crash Indicator. By looking at a carrier's safety violations in each of the categories, FMCSA and state law enforcement agencies will be better equipped to identify carriers with patterns of high-risk behaviors, and subsequently apply interventions that provide carriers the information necessary to change unsafe practices early on.


FMCSA will continue to conduct on-site comprehensive compliance reviews for carrier company;s with safety issues across multiple BASICs; where a carrier has not taken the appropriate corrective measures, FMCSA will invoke strong civil penalties.


To gain more information regarding the new CSA program, please feel free to contact UWC directly (1.877.273.7400) or visit the CSA website at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov.

Do you have any early CSA experiences you would like to share??

CSA 2010 - Dispelling Myths - Part 2

We are now in the countdown stages to CSA 2010, with one month to go until public launch date!!!

Similarly to our post from Sept 30th, 2010, this week's blog post will look at the CSA 2010 information titled CSA 2010: Just the Facts. UWC has picked out another 5 from this list that we find to be interesting and informative. They are listed below:

1. Carrier companies will not inherit any of a newly hired driver's past violations. Only those inspections that a driver receives while driving under a carrier's authority can be applied to a Carrier's Safety Measurement System Assessment.

2. Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 (CSA 2010) introduces a driver safety assessment tool to help enforcement staff evaluate driver's safety as part of motor carrier investigations. Using the new Safety Measurement System (SMS), the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) continues to hold motor carriers responsible for the job performance of those who work for them. Therefore, motor carrier companies are held accountable for their drivers' errors, such as speeding. This is a longstanding FMCSA position and is not unique to CSA 2010 or the new SMS.

3. Potentially erroneous violations on carrier/driver records can be submitted for review. The DataQs system (https://dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov), which does not change under CSA 2010, allows motor carrier companies and drivers to make a Request for Data Review, or RDR, of information that resides in FMCSA databases such as crash and inspection reports.

4. The SMS assesses a carrier's safety performance on the basis of its roadside violations and crashes. The SMS uses a subset of these violations and crashes to evaluate an individual driver's safety performance across employers. Appendix A of the SMS Methodology shows a complete table of the violations that are used and indicates whether a given violation is used in the Driver SMS. Drivers and carrier companies authorized by a driver to conduct a pre-employment screening have the ability to view three years of inspection data and five years of crash data through the Pre-employement Screening Program (PSP). http://www.psp.fmcsa.dot.gov/Pages/FAQ.aspx.

5. If a carrier company or commercial motor vehicle driver finds any violations in his or her crash or roadside inspection reports that are not listed in the SMS Methodology severity tables, then they do not count towards the carrier company's or driver's SMS data.

Stay tuned for additional info from UWC regarding CSA 2010, and please feel free to share any info you have also heard!!

References:

CSA 2010: Just the Facts. U.S. Department of Transportation. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Http://CSA2010.FMCSA.dot.gov. July 2010.