Changes are coming to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Safety Measurement System (SMS) to reduce and prevent crashes.
The federal agency has proposed changes it says will allow it to better identify companies needing the most intervention and will help companies better understand how to use the data it collects to influence safer behaviors.
These proposed changes were announced Feb. 14.
What’s changing?
The SMS uses data from roadside inspections, crash reports and investigations to identify and prioritize interventions for motor carriers that pose the greatest risk to safety.
Proposed changes include:
- reorganizing the SMS’s safety categories
- organizing roadside violations into violation groups for prioritization purposes
- simplifying violation severity weights
- adjusting some Intervention Thresholds that identify companies for possible intervention, and
- more changes aimed at comparing similar motor carriers to each other.
Visit new website, issue comments on changes
The first phase of planned updates to the SMS is already live in the form of a new website, the Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) Prioritization Preview.
Motor carriers can visit the website to preview how their data would appear under the proposed changes. Companies are “encouraged to preview these results and submit feedback” at the Federal Register website.
The 90-day comment period began Feb. 15, 2023, and will close May 16, 2023.
FMCSA strongly encourages stakeholders to participate in the preview and submit their comments to the public docket.
