What you can expect from FMCSA’s safety fitness rules

The Safety Fitness Determination is part of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability initiative, says Joe DeLorenzo, director of the FMCSA Office of Enforcement and Compliance.

FMCSA will draw on data from roadside inspections, violation history, on-site inspections and more to make Safety Fitness Determinations.

The agency says the time and expense of on-site compliance review means that only a small percentage of carriers currently receive a Safety Fitness Determination each year. Changes to the rule would allow more carriers to be evaluated and review SFD scores, FMCSA says.

The Safety Fitness Determination would assign an absolute number to each carrier that is based on an algorithm rather than manual compliance reviews. To determine the rating, FMCSA will look for patterns of behavior in areas of the CSA BASICS that it believes show a correlation to crashes.

There has been some disagreement about whether crash correlation exists in all the areas FMCSA wants to include.

The rule is designed to show when a carrier is unfit to operate. The goal of the program is to reduce crashes caused by drivers of commercial motor vehicles and carriers.

The proposed changes, the text of which will not be released until the agency publishes the rule, should correct deficiencies in the current method of determining safety fitness, FMCSA says. The White House Office of Management and Budget has 90 days to clear rules once it receives them.

Originally posted on CCJ and Hard Working Truck

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What you can expect from FMCSA’s safety fitness rules