FMCSA Chief: CSA to have public meeting, defends ELD mandate

From Transport Topics.

A meeting to gather input on ways to improve the Compliance, Safety, Accountability performance scoring program for carriers will be scheduled this year, the country’s top trucking regulator told House lawmakers on July 18.

With nearly four months to finalize a corrective plan for the CSA program, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will hear from stakeholders and collaborate with industry, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Acting Administrator Daphne Jefferson said.

CSA was recently the focus of a National Academy of Sciences study. The reforms proposed in the study included adoption of an “item response theory” for gathering and computing safety data from carriers’ performance on the roadways. The study’s authors will assist the agency with adopting the proposed methodology in the corrective plan, Jefferson noted.

The corrective “strategy that will get us to a better result,” she said, while not announcing when a public meeting would be held.

The CSA corrective plan, required by the 2015 FAST Act highway law, would need to be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inspector General. CSA was designed to improve safety along freight corridors by issuing a scoring system for the industry.

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