While speaking at Commercial Carrier Journal’s Spring Symposium, the FMCSA’s Chief Safety Officer, Jack Van Steenburg, made a shocking statement when he said that the way the CSA system ranks crashes is “not fair.” He even went so far as to say that the FMCSA recognizes that they “have to do something for the industry” to fix it.
The system Van Steenburg is talking about is part of the FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, and Accountability system that tries to rank carriers using their safety and maintenance records. Currently the FMCSA weighs all crashes a carrier is involved in the same, whether or not the driver was found at fault. According to Van Steenburg, the only crashes that should only count against a carrier are the “really obvious ones.”
It was this specific facet of the CSA program that Van Steenburg was referring to when he said that the system was unfair and, unfortunately, it seems that he is unwilling to admit that there is anything else wrong with the controversial ranking system.
“Our data is accurate,” Van Steenburg said. “I challenge anybody to say the data is inaccurate.”
Of course, plenty of people have already challenged the accuracy of the data the CSA relies on to score carriers. Even the Government Accountability Office published a report which clearly stated that it believes that the CSA score does not give an accurate assessment of a carrier’s safety.
Still, if the FMCSA Chief Safety Officer is willing to admit that the program isn’t completely 100% infallible, maybe the trucking industry can hope to see some changes to the CSA system in the future.
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Ron says
“Currently the FMCSA weighs all crashes a carrier is involved in the same, whether or not the driver was found at fault.” The FMCSA also claimed to the OOIDA that “Police officers don’t lie on an accident reports”. I sent my accident report to FMCSA in Washington to prove that cops will lie about out of state truckers. The guy that ran a redlight into the right side of my truck,and killed his passenger.(I had the green light,and had almost completed my left turn ) He was an Ohio state employee,driving an Ohio state owned vehicle. Now who’s neglience got covered up? Police offficers playing “Politics” at an accident scene. “Equal Justice under the law” Not if Ohio Highway Patrol can manipulate the facts !