FMCSA to study use of statistical modeling to determine carrier interventions

From FreightWaves.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has agreed to implement a series of actions as it works toward the possible implementation of an Item Response Theory (IRT) approach to identifying at-risk carriers for intervention.

IRT is a data-driven approach that has been used in other settings, such as ranking hospitals, says Science Daily. It is relatively unproven in trucking, but FMCSA and NAS believe that if utilized correctly, it can provide improved modeling data to identify carriers at the most risk.

Since its launch, FMCSA’s CSA program and the underlying SMS methodology used to determine carrier risk scores has been under fire from the industry, saying that is improperly identifies carriers for interventions. In February 2014, the GAO issued a report, “Modifying the Compliance, Safety, Accountability Program Would Improve the Ability to Identify High Risk Carriers,” that suggested FMCSA revise Safety Measurement System (SMS) methodology to better account for data limitations and that the agency consider those data limitations when determining a carrier’s fitness to operate.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) followed that report with one of its own, saying that FMCSA’s approach was defensible, but a more statistically driven approach to data collection, something known as IRT, would improve the process.

See the full story from FreightWaves online.