***UPDATE***
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has cancelled the two upcoming webinars in February and March. Registration is no longer open. They may be rescheduled at a later date.
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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on January 16 held the first of three webinars on upcoming changes to the Safety Measurement System. The SMS is the statistical component of FMCSA’s CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) program. SMS compiles, categorizes, and weights motor carrier and truck driver violations, guiding FMCSA on which carriers require intervention.
FMCSA summarized its decisions on changes to the SMS on November 20, 2024 (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-11-20/pdf/2024-27087.pdf). The three webinars explain those changes in greater depth.
The first webinar looked at the Agency’s decision to reorganize compliance categories (formerly known as “BASICs”), reduce the number of individual violations, and simplify violation severity weights. Webinar #2 on February 25 and #3 on March 25 will examine other SMS changes.
The FMCSA webinar promotion stated that the session would include an announcement of the “anticipated” effective date for implementation of the SMS changes. The effective date, however, awaits upgrades to the Agency website and internal adjustments to enforcement practices… and, of course, the other two webinars. FMCSA will publish a Federal Register notice about the effective date, promising sufficient lead time for motor carriers to adjust.
Reorganized compliance categories:
Unsafe Driving would include the following violations:
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol violations (no longer a separate category).
- All operating while Out-of-Service (OOS) violations, regardless of which compliance category violation resulted in the OOS order.
Vehicle Maintenance would be divided into two categories:
- Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed, including violations that could reasonably be observed by a driver during pre- and post-trip inspections or detected as part of a Walk-Around (Level 2) roadside inspection.
- Vehicle Maintenance includes all other vehicle maintenance violations, those more commonly identified by a mechanic doing routine maintenance or detected as part of a Full (Level 1) roadside inspection.
FMCSA believes these reorganized compliance categories will help better identify the sources of violations, thereby helping carriers improve their safety.
Reduced number of individual violations:
FMCSA took the current 2,000 possible violations and reduced them to about 100 groups of similar violations. For example, all the hours of service (HOS) violations will now be in one group. When an HOS citation is issued, the motor carrier will still be able to see the detailed cause but only an HOS group violation will be charged.
FMCSA believes the new reduction in violation categories will prevent enforcement inconsistencies and promote fairness.
Simplified severity weights:
Currently, violations are given severity weights from 1 to 10. Under the new SMS methodology, severity will be 1 or 2, with 2 being the more severe. For example, any Out-of-Service (OOS) violation, regardless of which compliance category, will receive a 2. When there are multiple violations in the same group, only one severity weight will be assigned, defaulting to a level 2 severity if a more serious violation is present.
FMCSA believes that the current 1-10 severity weight assessment allows for too much subjectivity.
Motor carriers can review these changes by going to https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/prioritizationpreview. The slides and recording of the first webinar are posted there. Carriers can also register there for the February and March webinars.