In August 2023 the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on potential changes to the Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) process of CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) (https://www.regulations.gov/document/FMCSA-2022-0003-0005). The Safety Fitness Determination process produces safety ratings, declaring, under the process as it currently stands, that a motor carrier is Fit, Unfit or Conditional. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of motor carriers are rated under the current SFD process. PrePass submitted comments to that ANPRM (https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FMCSA-2022-0003-0180).
Safety Fitness Determination is, in turn, largely based on FMCSA’s record of motor carrier and truck driver violations, as captured in the CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS). SMS compiles, categorizes, and weights motor carrier and truck driver violations.
- In February 2023, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed changes to the Safety Measurement System and sought public comment (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-02-15/pdf/2023-02947.pdf.)
- On November 20, 2024, FMCSA summarized the public comments and its decisions on changes to the SMS (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-11-20/pdf/2024-27087.pdf).
These FMCSA decisions on SMS will impact the Safety Fitness Determination rulemaking as it moves forward:
- Abandon Item Response Theory (IRT), the complex statistical modeling and analysis methodology which most truckers cannot replicate to make improvements in their safety score.
- Reduce the 1-10 severity weight range for violations, as it allows too much subjectivity. FMCSA will now assess violations as 1 or 2, with 2 representing severe violations.
- Emphasize events in the last 12 months to encourage continuous safety improvement and treat smaller fleets more fairly.
- Reorganize and rename the CSA BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories) into seven “Compliance Categories”:
- Unsafe Driving – now to include drug/alcohol violations as well as violations while operating under an out-of-service (OOS) order
- Vehicle Maintenance, Driver Observed – to emphasize pre- and post-trip inspections
- Vehicle Maintenance, Other – all other vehicle maintenance violations
- Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance
- Crash Indicator
- Hours of Service (HOS) Compliance
- Driver Fitness
- Consolidate Violations, reducing today’s 959 possible violations into 116 groups with similar safety issues, thereby improving understanding and enforcement consistency.
- Adopt “Proportionate Percentiles” to remove sudden spikes when carriers move from one safety event group to another.
- Adjust Intervention Thresholds to reflect which Compliance Categories are strongly correlated to crash risk (Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, and HOS Compliance) and which are least related to crashes (Driver Fitness and HM Compliance).
- Update Power Unit Utilization, moving from an assumed 200,000 miles per year (VMT) to 250,000 miles per year.
FMCSA will publish an official notice announcing the launch date for these changes. Carriers can preview the changes by going to https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/prioritizationpreview. That FMCSA website will also announce a series of SMS webinars.
PrePass will keep customers informed, while awaiting the next steps on Safety Fitness Determination.