Appendix A
Stakeholder Comments by Topic

APPENDIX A1. STAKEHOLDER COMMENTS REGARDING THE SAFETY COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT

Appendix A1 is devoted to comments provided by Listening Session participants around topics of how the community and environment affect safety. The statements presented are inclusive of the substantive points made by participants on this specific set of topics. The goal of the compilers has been to preserve comments in their original form but, at the same time, eliminate redundancy.

The largest portion of this chapter is devoted to key players; those individuals in the community that have a role in motor carrier safety. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is not listed among the key players, but instead has its own dedicated section within this chapter, since its role as a regulatory agency drives the safety agenda for the carrier community. This chapter also discusses partnerships among the key players, and between the key players and FMCSA, and finally presents thoughts on the role of tangible infrastructure, such as roads and vehicles, with respect to safety.

A1.1 Key Players

Drivers

• Carrier drivers need to be a part of monitored groups. There is not enough attention given to the drivers; there is too much on attention given to the process.
  • FMCSA should also be monitoring driver leasing companies.
• Examine and identify the difference between drivers versus carriers.
• Drivers need a stronger say on when shipment can be delivered.
• However, maybe that is expanding the parameters of focus too much and overreaching.
• We need more focus on individual drivers, hold them accountable for personal performance and change their driving performance (if it is poor).
  • It is hard to hold drivers accountable. In order to achieve accountability, ALL drivers need to be included: all Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) (defined as any vehicle over 10,000 lbs), and non-commercial vehicles.
  • There is a concern that accountability may distract from safety regulations, but it is possible that accountability will not distract from the safety regulations if you track a driver over time.
  • We should extend accountability to drivers for safety and background investigations, and have them report compliance to DOT (which is different from carrier reporting responsibility).
• We must respond to the changing driver pool, because new drivers are less experienced.

Employment Environment

• There has been an increase of foreign nationals brought in from overseas to be drivers in the United States. There needs to be special attention to this new industry dynamic so we can properly address driver safety and fitness for the road system.
• There is a serious driver shortage, and there is only so much pressure that can be put on drivers before they leave the job.
  • Shifting the policing function from --- to carriers is tough in this economic environment.
  • Nevertheless, if drivers are held accountable they will perform at a higher level.
  • If drivers with bad records are allowed to switch companies, safety will be compromised. All drivers must be held accountable in some uniform way.
• To address turnover rates and the shortage of drivers, start vocational education in high schools to develop potential drivers; identify transportation as a viable career path; stop them from doing things between the ages of 18-21 that would prevent them being hired as drivers.

Hiring and Certifying

• Each company hiring manager needs to make the right decisions.
  • Regulations can only go so far.
  • Use the Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) database for drivers; good place to start when hiring.
• Currently drivers are able to move from carrier to carrier, and there is no way for a carrier to track past driving performance.
  • Currently, poor performing drivers can go from one company to the next since violations stay with a company and do not follow the driver.
  • The current law in California has a standard requiring 3 years of employment records and 2 years of drug and alcohol test results to be available (to employers).
• Qualifying drivers takes too much time and there is a shortage of drivers.
  • Companies need better, faster, and more accessible ways to pull background checks. This would enable companies to hire quicker and better drivers while maintaining a higher level of compliance.
  • The companies that are winning are those who can get drivers on road quickly.
    • Companies that are trying to comply by certifying drivers and completing background checks are losing drivers to other companies.
    • Some of the biggest violators of hiring practice regulations are large companies.
• Are there incentives or benefits to having experienced drivers?
  • Not if drivers are not unionized.
  • Many carriers would rather have new drivers.
    • Less experienced drivers cost the company less in salaries.
    • Inexperienced drivers can be trained according to the company?s needs.
  • Some insurance companies will not let companies have drivers with less than xyz years of experience.

Educational Standards

• Require minimum standard of education for all drivers.
  • Driver Vehicle Inspection Report (DVIR) ? make drivers accountable for their education as well as the carrier.
• Establish an annual educational requirement.
• Provide more voluntary opportunities for drivers to be involved and develop a relationship with the FMCSA.
• Carriers must understand and appreciate that many drivers? education level is below that of many other occupations.

What to Monitor (Non-data driven)

• Identify ways to monitor and measure driver behavior through standards that are performance-based not just statistical.
  • Conduct interviews without face-to-face meetings using electronic means or paper information.
  • Use new methods of observation.
  • Use data collected via on-board recording technology, such as hours-of-service.
    • However, these records need to be associated with managers and companies as well, not just the drivers.
    • FMCSA needs to be able to measure difference between on-duty and off-duty time.
    • A general challenge will be implementing the technology due to resistance from carriers and drivers, and cost.
  • Establish a system that distinguishes between driver errors and equipment issues. Equipment violations need to be documented and recorded.
  • Background checks should include past employment records, Motor Vehicle Record (MVR).
  • Critical factors such as fatigue need to be monitored closely.
  • Road tests and license reviews need to be conducted regularly.
• Connect citations and other traffic violations associated with a driver?s personal driving record and personally owned vehicle (POV) to his or her commercial driver?s license (CDL).
  • This will not be fair if it affects their personal insurance rates.

Performance

• Negative inspection results and log violations should follow a driver by being attached to their CDL to help carriers from hiring drivers with bad records.
• Implement a grading system for drivers and companies. Grades could be issued during various phases of employment/training:
  • Pre-employment,
  • Hiring,
  • Issuing or renewing CDL.
• Drivers should have a scoring system similar to carriers based on:
  • Motor vehicle history,
  • Valid license by state,
  • Number of log violations, and
  • Number/type/fault of accidents.
• FMCSA and other regulating entities should notify the motor vehicle carrier of driver violations.
  • This raises the issues of ?Big Brother?, and violation of driver?s right to privacy.
  • The insurance companies already watch this so what?s the problem?
  • Smaller companies rely on the driver to pass violations back to the company owner, but there is no incentive for the driver to do this and it often does not get done. Companies need a way to receive driver performance information in a timely manner.

Disciplinary Action

• Industry needs more effective medical oversight to minimize issues such as forged medical cards. Drivers should be disciplined for medical fraud and omission of violations.
• Speeding violation enforcement should bear more severe consequences; for example, revoking of license or high fines.
  • Violations should also acknowledge moving type loads like hazmat and tankers.
• When carriers become out-of-service, it does not impact the driver. The driver can still get another job.
• Drivers should only be accountable for what they can control. However, currently, there is currently little consequence for their individual behavior.
• Drivers know that enforcement mainly happens with carriers and that they (the drivers) can get away with more.

Carriers

• FMCSA needs to be monitoring all carriers, which include:
  • Carriers in large metropolises
  • Unregulated carriers
  • Regulated inter and intra state companies over 10,000 lbs
  • International haulers
    • However, an issue is that FMCSA cannot regulate without jurisdiction.
  • Rogue carriers
    • Often travel up and down the interstate without penalty.
    • Often they also drive back road routes to avoid inspections.
  • Small carriers
    • There is concern about small carriers falling through the cracks. Larger carriers are more dominant so they have more inspections and attract more attention. Smaller carriers are not as easy to see. They may have less number of miles and less equipment but they still need to adhere to regulations.
  • Consortia
    • Are they following the regulations for providing documentation, random testing, accurate reports, and other regulations set for the industry?
    • Small motor carriers rely on consortia to keep them in compliance. It is difficult to help people comply if the consortium does not know the rules.
    • So, how can FMCSA help small carriers?
  • Small carriers could show they meet certification requirements.
  • Pay extra effort to incorporate the smaller carriers.
• FMCSA needs to ?get inside? the carriers.
  • Interview carrier officials.
  • Interview customer service personnel and operations schedulers.
  • Chief security officer (CSO) should work with FMCSA. A potential barrier is that, some safety departments are under?funded (and may not have a CSO).
• FMCSA needs to find ways to ensure that safety personnel understand the core performance of their organization. In addition, there should be minimum standard education levels, and certification and re-certification statuses established for safety personnel.
• What is working?
  • FMCSA's set of standards sets focus and direction for carriers.
  • Having FMCSA physically present at a motor carrier?s place of business is especially helpful during on-site inspection visits.

Management

• Require a ?real? yearly certification like those required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
  • The OSHA 300 log affirmation is a good example because it also considers operational characteristics.
  • Corporate officers should sign something similar to SEC requirement for a signature of statement on compliance.
• The company should be accountable.
  • Because the individuals are not held accountable through FMCSA, the responsibility should fall on the company.
  • In order to get around this, some individuals move companies.
• It is up to the company to manage driver performance and then if the company stays ?clean?, the government does not need to be involved.
• Make the program so that it helps the owner fix the problem.
  • Certify safety coordinators at carrier companies.
  • Help educate the industry
• It behooves us as managers to use the system properly and to be more proactive.
  • Is FMCSA asking us to take more responsibility?
• Carriers need to identify management staff [to FMCSA].
  • Some states already require management staff identification.
  • Owners? names could be kept as part of the database, and treated as any other data of the business.

What to Monitor (Non-data driven)

• Monitor the management of a company.
  • Check whether proactive programs are in place and whether they are effective.
  • Check the company?s safety culture based on its training programs, [employee attitudes], safety record, and safety policies.
  • Check driver stability, turnover and strong management. These are the basic indicators of a stable workforce. Deterioration in any area leads to problems.
  • Look at key elements in the carrier?s safety program. Check:
    • The history of the motor carrier.
    • Drivers? histories.
    • How many companies the owner has closed and re-opened.
• Inspect the financial state of carriers. When companies are in financial trouble, the first programs usually cut are safety and maintenance.
  • Financial inconsistencies can be a warning flag.
  • The danger zone is a carrier with 25-50 vehicles. The cost of a safety director is a competitive disadvantage for that size of company.
• Assess the culture of individual companies and states by measuring the company based on quality of driving personnel.
• Consider the [physical] appearance of driver and truck.
  • This already plays into roadside inspections but needs to be done outside of the inspections.
  • Check for ?imminent hazards?.
  • The issue with monitoring driver and truck appearance is that there are no federal personnel to do this. How will we accomplish this need? Perhaps have the State personnel monitor back-road routes.
• Monitor the integrity of a company.
  • Verify if owner(s) have a history of prosecutions, unsatisfactory ratings, or have changed the company?s name.
  • Have a subjective measure of strong management, using objective characteristics.
  • Check if various paperwork items are being filed in a timely manner because this may be an indicator of quality.
• Are MCS150 form submissions timely?
  • If companies do not complete an MCS150 form, operation authority should be pulled or the company should lose their insurance. FMCSA would be responsible for pulling the operations authority.

Motor Carrier Authority

• An effective way the FMCSA can monitor carriers and control behavior is by issuing a warning of losing authority and enforcing the loss of authority.
  • Loss of authority would be effective for those that require authority. However, not all companies are required to have authority.
  • FMCSA needs to monitor the authority concept as opposed to monitoring the function of transportation. A Motor Carrier number means you can haul anywhere, versus a DOT number of an interstate motor carrier. When it comes to safety, who cares [to distinguish]? The authority should have been done away with because if you want to be a carrier then you must comply with safety.
  • Authority is irrelevant if the purpose of the FMCSA is safe operations and reduced injury, death and crashes. We need to determine the function of safety and if we are supposed to be meeting that goal.

Owners

• Existing owners of a company should be prevented from setting up a new company.
  • Carriers should not operate under multiple entities.
  • Many facets are involved; some companies do not have insurance.
• Have the equivalent of a CDL for owners.
  • The Federal Maritime Commission and other transportation committees have information on officers and directors and require a certain amount of experience before being qualified for their position.
• [There should be] background checks and fitness checks before an owner(s) obtains authority, in addition to pre-employment drug testing.
  • However, this creates a higher level of resources to regulate.

Economics of the Business

• Carriers are often forced to choose between serving the client or losing the client.
  • Take action against carriers who accept unreasonable contracts.
  • Take action against businesses that pressure carriers to accept unreasonable contracts.
• Consider the economics of trucking industry. In a few years there may be a decrease of carriers due to the high price of diesel fuel.
• Pay and compensation.
  • Much of safety boils down to economics. If there is a way to ensure pay is fair and equitable, then you have a better chance of equitable safety compliance by the industry.

Carriers: Bus Companies

• More bus carriers need to be inspected.
• Church and charter buses should be treated the same.
  • Non-profits should be equally regulated.
  • Compliance costs money and that cost is passed along to customers. Non-profits have harder time absorbing the costs of compliance.
    • Is a passenger?s life worth less because they are traveling with a non-profit organization?
• Hours-of-Service issue:
  • Tour groups often will not pay for drivers to comply with hours-of-service. Some bus companies ignore regulations altogether.
  • The bus industry operates differently from the trucking industry for hours- of-service.
• How often are city buses reviewed?

Carriers: Owner-Operators

• Different regulatory agencies define carriers in different ways.,
• [Owner-Operators] should take more direct responsibility because they play the role of both carrier and driver.
• Unsuspecting owner-operators can be abused by carriers and need protection and education.
  • Some carriers are predominately in the business of buying and selling trucks and not in the business of hauling freight.
• Agreements of Lease or Purchase Drivers need to be monitored, especially the economics of the agreement.

Carriers: New Entrants

• Compliance does NOT equal safety; do more upfront to prevent future problems [by engaging with new entrants].
• Check to see if the carrier is an old carrier under a new name. Existing carriers that are not complying [often] establish new entities to get around non-compliance; for example they often change their name or legal status.
  • There are also various other loopholes such as document falsification.
  • FMCSA needs to impose a penalty if a new company is started by changing their name.
  • Currently, there is no penalty for carriers who close down and open back up under different name.
    • Create a ?watchlist of individuals? and companies.
    • Check for consistent hours-of-service violations.
    • Watch and check the point-of-sale or re-sale of equipment by Vehicle Identification Number (VIN)
      • Purpose of use (for example, are they non-profits or small companies operating illegally?)
      • [Partner with] vehicle manufacturers and resellers

Identifying New Entrants

• New entrants should alert FMCSA of cell phone numbers so that they can be tracked [and contacted].
• New entrants often come from drivers who worked for other companies and then became an employer.
• Contractors could be used to contact all the new entrants in a instead of enforcement officers.
  • Partner with insurance companies and truck driving schools to influence the quality of new entrants.

Raise the Bar

• Evaluate and approve new entrants to see if they are up to standards before entering. Licensing application process would need to be changed.
• It is too easy to enter the industry. New York City cabs have a series of hoops to go through to get a license, why is it so much easier for trucks?
• Need to challenge [new entrants?] knowledge of rules when they apply for a DOT number (similar to what is done for a driver?s license) to assure fitness before the DOT number is established.
  • An example of testing fitness is the Department of Defense (DOD) program. They send carriers seven-page questionnaires before they are accepted. As a result, 20 percent [of carriers] are rejected for their DOD number or insurance program.
• Establish higher level of financial responsibility for entry-level carriers.
• Require fee for new entrants and justify the cost by earmarking dollars to improve safety, compliance, or education programs. If [those funds are] focused and targeted to safety, the industry would be paying for its own safety compliance though the fees.
• There should be an investigation before issuing a license to prevent repeat carrier offenders from re-opening business under a new name.
• New entrants should have a required level of education in order to get a DOT number; this should be more than just an MC (motor carrier) number. Currently, more education is required.
  • Use this as a barrier to entry. Mandate training. New entrants should attend a seminar prior to receiving a DOT number.
  • It should be harder to get into the business than stay in the business.
  • Florida has a program where new carriers are required to attend a seminar to learn about Compliance Review (CR ) process. Georgia does not have any rule at all for new entrants.
• The positive effects this could have:
  • Slow incoming entrants. We acknowledge the amount of new entrants and limitations in covering more than 2 percent of the industry due to money constraints, Congress, and number of bodies.
  • Improve the quality of carriers on the road
  • Identify who is violating the rules.

Process for New Entrants should be ?Educate, Then Certify, Then Monitor?

• Prevention and education greatly lower the number of new entrants. FMCSA cannot efficiently get to all the new entrants, but it is better to orient them before they start.
  • Currently, new entrants receive a letter without any follow-up of regulations or expectations.
  • Use education to reduce fines; for example, if [company staff] takes a certain number of educational classes a fine could be reduced.
• Improve new entrant program with stronger control, safety audits, testing, and ratings. Front-load new entrant program with CR?s and assessment ratings.
  • Assess safety fitness programs and look at acute and critical violations. If the processes are poor, put the carrier out-of -service until they are in compliance.
  • FMCSA should have a certification process in place for [new] operators [to expedite the start-up process and encourage compliance].
    • Some new carriers are put out of service for 30 days because they have not received their warning letter.
  • [The FMCSA should] perform [a new entrant?s] CR with a rating in the first 18 months of operation.
• [New entrants could] post a bond to cover the cost of a pre-entry safety certification and rating that could be conducted by a certified third party examiner.
• Educating new entrants wastes the time of enforcement officers.

Auditing New Entrants

• New entrant audits should have better follow-up after the initial audit.
  • Initial audit should be more informal and educational.
  • Audit done inside initial 18 months was informative.
  • Need better responsiveness from DOT during follow-up.
  • DOT is responsive when organization states that they need a training program immediately. However, once DOT leaves a facility, compliance often ends immediately.
  • Organizations often feel like they have no one to go to. When they call DOT, there is no one to talk to, and all they can do is leave a message.
• New carriers are [often] willing to undergo a CR, [and yet are] unable to get one.
  • It is inefficient to perform CRs [for new entrants] one by one; administering them in groups would be better.
  • CRs for new entrants should have more Q & A.
• New U.S. entrant audits differ from Mexican entrant audits:
  • Mexican carriers are required to go through a safety audit first to allow them provisional authority, then, are issued a CR after 18 months for permanent authority.
  • U.S. carriers: No audit prior to obtaining operating authority. Initial audit is scheduled within a ?reasonable timeframe? after DOT number request, and then there is no follow-up,
• Follow up and enforcement is lacking.

Dispatchers

• During a compliance review (CR) it would be useful to talk to dispatchers, inspect the operation and safety program.
  • Conduct employee interviews, similar to the interviews conducted by OSHA and report observations.
    • If a dispatcher understands hours-of-service, this at least shows an attempt at safety compliance.
  • Look at the morale of employees and drivers.
    • Dispatcher can affect morale.
• Currently, there is no documentation on dispatcher activities.
  • Data storage issues
  • Off hours
  • Dispatchers are key resources [of information] and often underutilized.
• You can relate on-time rates and miles per gallon back to the dispatcher.

Shippers, Brokers and Receivers

• There are many forms of shippers:
  • Travel agents.
  • Tour agencies.
  • Other customers.
• [Someone needs to] regulate shippers.
  • FMCSA needs legislation from Congress in order to enforce with criminal and civil penalties.
  • Could regulate by hours-of-operation and proper identification of shipped goods.
• Shipment documents that are incorrect and or inaccurate should be the responsibility of shipper. Currently carriers are cited for any errors made by the shipper.
• Shipper put loads together but they do not have to load them themselves.
• During compliance reviews (CR), shippers and brokers are forgotten and the entire burden falls on the carrier.
  • Should the FMSCA have jurisdiction over shippers and brokers?
  • How would the FMCSA enforce rules with respect to these and other entities?
    • Build off contractual expectations
    • Actions should be taken against shippers who continually attempt to contract with unreasonable timeframe expectations, etc..
    • In addition, action should be taken against carriers who accept these unreasonable contracts.
• It is naïve to believe that FMCSA can have an affect on shippers.
  • The reality is that consumers need to make the correct decision.

Shipper Impact on Carrier Industry Raises Question of Need for Regulation

• Review shippers to see if they are putting pressure on the carrier industry.
  • Driver?s log has shipping information. A specific shipper?s name may be linked to forcing hours-of-service.
    • FMCSA needs to police this connection somehow and have the authority to enforce retribution for violations.
  • Large shippers are the ones involved [main offenders of pressuring hours-of-service]. They need special regulation and a specified penalty. Small shippers usually do not have the leverage to apply pressure to carriers.
  • [The FMCSA should take] example from hazardous waste, where the concept [of safety] is ?from cradle to grave? meaning that everyone in the chain is responsible for the disposal. Assign responsibility to the shippers in addition to the carrier. The penalty is liability. Make shippers accountable for hiring carriers.
  • It is the responsibility of shipper to choose a good carrier, not just the guy with the cheapest rate.
• Shippers require that products be delivered on time, demanding drivers to violate minimum hours. They also dictate how vehicles should be loaded and they lack accountability.
• An FMCSA agent should call on shippers known to require carriers to conduct unrealistic delivery schedules thereby forcing violation of hours requirements. Shippers should be held liable for ?aiding and abetting? those violations.
• Shippers? demands are putting pressure on carriers to promote illegal action on part of the carrier and the driver.
  • FMCSA can monitor shippers and motor equipment operators and enforce responsibility.
    • Are shippers hiring carriers that are going out of service more frequently? If so, what responsibility do they have?
    • Do carriers [in violation] end up being placed out of service or get an unsatisfactory rating [from FMCSA]?
  • Carriers take responsibility when they assume freight, but shippers bear none.
    • If there are carriers with out-of-service problems, look at who the shippers are. If a specific shipper hires four core carriers and all of them have problems then perhaps the shipping company should be consider or sited for placing unsafe demands on people hauling products.
    • Shippers always get a free ride! They should be treated fairly and equitably.

Shipper Incentives and Enforcement

• Create shipper disincentive to put load on street.
  • There is a network of knowledge within industry of who will take loads.
  • The question is how to report and enforce, and what will be the response? We need to know the agency has someone to talk to if they are raising awareness of an issue.
• Create shipper incentives to create more driver friendly loading times, better equipment utilization, predictable freight patterns.
  • For example, a discount for non-peak hour shipping. Trucking companies could expand operations to handle non-peak shipping such as extending into weekends and using more drivers without additional cost of equipment.
• Shipper ratings could established and be based on:
  • Accuracy.
  • On-time arrival.
  • Creating a safe environment.
  • OSHA ratings on injury reports.
• Shippers should get fined for ?forcing? drivers to break regulations.
  • Define at what point does it become negligence by the shipper to give hazardous material to a carrier?
• Maybe license shippers and hold them accountable in some way.
  • Provide shippers with more information and make them accountable for knowing and applying that information.
  • We cannot make the industry enforce the shipper and customer controls.
  • Is it better to regulate the shipper or the motor carrier to assure effective enforcement?
  • What is the insurance industry?s perspective on this topic?
• Currently, there is no accountability with shippers on what they ask carriers to do. Maybe shippers can become involved in this process.

Shipper Awareness

• Shippers should tour distribution centers.
• Shippers should assist carriers in meeting compliance.
  • Need to educate shippers on regulations, and the realities of transportation.

Equipment Suppliers

• The intermodal equipment suppliers.
  • Where does the accountability by the owner start and the equipment supplier stop?
• Owners of trailers [leasing companies].

Unions

• [Some perceive] that they keep unsafe drivers on the road.
• [Others perceive] that they keep drivers from being penalized for not agreeing to pressure of operating unsafely to meet shipper requirements.
  • Do request help from law enforcement when driver is pressured by carrier.

Law Enforcement
[Also refer to Appendix A1.3 Partnerships/Partnerships with States]

• The level of enforcement is currently different in different places.
  • Law enforcement needs to investigate truck complaints.
• There is discrepancy with enforcement officers. When I call the local enforcement agency to take care of a motor carrier violation, they have no idea what I am talking about. If you make a phone call that there is a robbery at a 7-11, they react. But if a limo company crosses a state line illegally, they do not respond. Aren?t they supposed to respond to that, too?
• Educate law enforcement on more than just basics of commercial driving.
  • Local law enforcement needs to know the local laws.
  • There is different experience at the state level.
  • Law enforcement training is functionally based. According to a Wisconsin study, only 4% [of incidents] are checked by fully trained people. It is more likely that crashes are the responsibility of unregulated motor carriers.
• Currently, neither State DOT nor USDOT pursues uninsured carriers. However, carriers have been known to borrow ICCS and DOT numbers from others to invent phony IDs, and insurance cards.
• Law enforcement is source of data.
  • There needs to be more accountability for law enforcement to report accurately.
  • Accident reporting guidelines are needed. Many problems occur with SafeStat because of misinformation and checking the wrong boxes on accident reports.
  • Law enforcement should collect less information but standardize it.
• FMCSA has no authority over law enforcement group.

Third Parties: Commercial Driving Schools

• [The FMCSA should] work in conjunction with driving schools.
• Need to monitor or provide minimum reviews, standards, guidelines, certifications.
  • [However, this raises the question] ?What about over-regulating??
  • A rule was just passed on training but it didn?t go far enough because it does not address defensive driving.
    • Training should be consistent, but how is that done?
• Truck driving schools could help by ensuring a proper curriculum and providing professional accreditation.
• [Commercial Driving Schools could] conduct offsite testing.
• FMCSA should endorse existing good certified programs. Many schools are not currently certified.
  • Encourage similar programs that are best practices be adopted by new schools.
• FMCSA should track and oversee the following:
  • Curriculum.
  • Pass or fail rate of schools.
  • Performance of graduates including crashes, violations.

Third Parties: Examiners/Administrative Services

• [Certification of third parties is important.]
  • Certify other transportation consultants.
    • Certify to improve consistency of what is being communicated.
    • Certifying consultants may also require a change in rules because interpretation of rules creates subjectivity.
  • Create a certification process for providing third party administrative services for trucking associations.
    • For example, Medical Review Officers (MRO) who do drug tests need to have training on what is required for DOT regulations. [Also refer to Appendix A1.1 Key Players/Third Parties: Medical Professionals.]
• [The FMCSA should consider the] use of a licensed third party to:
  • Conduct all or part of compliance reviews (CR) or audits.
    • Insurance, private certified organizations or internal certified carrier personnel.
    • Paid by motor carrier and under the direction and control of the FMCSA.
    • Third parties could to the CR administrative work such as entering data into the system from the carrier.
    • Carriers would have no problem with third party inspectors if they are qualified.
  • Third parties could contact new entrants for other FMCSA activities without an associated enforcement action.
  • Institute a third party to conduct internal audits of security performance to encourage more companies to comply, and to increase the amount of data collected.
• [The FMCSA needs to consider the following concerns] if third parties are used:
  • There would be training, oversight, and certification issues.
  • The federal level should monitor fraud when using third party examiners.
  • Conflict of interest issues.
• Set up an outside certification program. FMCSA can be the sponsor and define requirements. Then the industry can maintain through market forces, interest in certification all by third party.
• The more you have the more you get ? insurance carriers and others can help create policies, requirements, structure, programs.

Third Parties: Medical Professionals

• Certify those who do DOT physicals, including Medical Review Officers (MRO) who administer drug tests.
  • The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certifies doctors for pilot physicals; currently, there is nothing like this for drivers. [The FMCSA] should use FAA method for guidelines.
  • Make a list of certified physicians available.
  • Currently drivers can go anywhere for physicals or drug testing, and doctor-shopping does occur.
  • Medical doctors should certify drivers, not medical assistants.
• [Medical exams] must be consistent, complete, uniform:
  • What is being checked? Physical health such as; blood pressure, hearing loss and medications.
  • Need programs that look out for shortcomings of clinical physicians because they do not know what needs to be looked at during these physicals.
  • Drivers and companies need to have confidence in the accuracy of drug testing procedures.
• Medical providers need to ?be on the same page?.
  • Physicians need to know what to look for in order to certify a ?safe? driver
    • Many doctors do not kept up-to-date with changes and new guidelines.
  • Supporting teams such as insurance and policy need to be consistent.
  • Need to establish standard definitions across the country.
• [The FMCSA needs to] revamp drug and alcohol regulations so that it ?captures? all drivers. However, this tensions between Human Resources versus Safety due to issues of invasion of privacy.
• Need a way to track immediate certification of drivers.
  • Better controls are needed of physical form which currently comes from drivers; this should come from medical professionals.
  • Carriers need to know, understand and have access to [some] database.
  • Driver?s health assessments should be made available, not all drivers will tell a company.
• Doctors do not want to put drivers out of work.

Third Parties: Vehicle Observing Companies

• The vehicle observing companies?companies get those reports and do not follow up on them. That should be considered, too. They might be doing it, having the sticker on their truck, but it is for show. It?s not something they monitor.

Insurance Companies

• [Insurance companies should] ensure that carriers have an MCS90. Right now, a carrier gets penalized, not the insurance company.
• There should be centralized data about insurance for carriers.
• States should notify FMCSA if an insurance agency goes out of business.
• Currently, neither State DOT nor USDOT pursues uninsured carriers. However, carriers have been known to borrow ICCS and DOT numbers from others to invent phony IDs, and insurance cards.
• Some insurance companies do not understand the business of carriers, which increases risk. These insurance companies need to be educated.
• Insurance companies want partnership because their bottom line is the safety of their clients.
• Partnership with insurance companies could:
  • Determine best practices
  • Make loss prevention resource program available
  • Disclose claims data
  • Standardize regulations across states
  • Programs focused on CMV, address needs and statistical data
• [The FMCSA should] partner with insurance companies, since they have so much information. Also because trucks, by law, must be insured, insurance companies often have up-to-date information. However, carrier companies are not always willing to share the data. Loss runs are the carrier?s property not the insurance industry, and the FMCSA could review and collect that information.
• Insurance companies do the same type of audit [as FMCSA]; FMCSA should follow the CR, educate and give information back to the insurance company.

The Motoring Public

• The motoring public (non-commercial drivers) should be tested, monitored, and educated.
  • Address other drivers on the road who do silly things such as cut in front of trucks and cause unnecessarily dangerous situations.
• Pay attention to non-commercial driving education. Educate non-CMV public using the roadway on:
  • Sharing the road with trucks. Expand existing ?Share the Road? program.
  • Where truck blind spots are located
  • Truck-related laws

A1.2 The FMCSA

• The FMCSA?s uniqueness is its enforcement power.
• There should be a performance metric for FMCSA itself.
  • Need to measure how well the compliance reviews (CRs) are being administered by the FMCSA and key officials.
  • Oversight is perceived as ineffective because compliance officer training lacks consistency.
• Also, the FMCSA must test out technologies. As part of change, FMCSA should use an evaluation tool for seeing whether we are heading in right direction.
• [The FMCSA needs to] drive fairness and uniformity by eliminating arbitrary discrepancies between states and apply its own rules consistently.

Coping with Growth, Size, Economics

• Need to streamline processes and cut down on paperwork.
• Need to catch up with what is there now and keep up.
• FMCSA is not keeping up with the current number of ?approved? carriers. However, is FMCSA only concerned with covering the numbers to hit their pre-determined goal?
  • FMCSA needs to clean up the records of ?dead? carriers.
• Functionally, there is no way to manage the increase in new carriers and freight.
  • FMCSA needs to get a handle on industry growth. Where are all the carriers coming from?
    • How will this growth continue to impact 2 percent of carriers receiving CRs?
    • As the number of entities to monitor increases, who will enforce violations?
• Trying to reach more people just to do an audit is ridiculous, FMCSA needs to have a legitimate reason as to why that will add value.
• There does not seem to be an effort to look at existing programs to see if they?re viable. [The FMCSA should] eliminate programs of no value before layering on more programs.
• If there is no change in the way FMCSA does business, everyone from the top down continues to drown. FMCSA will probably continue to regulate those who do not need to be regulated and squander the likelihood of any partnerships.
• Can another agency, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), security program take on some of the responsibility?
• Are carrier population growth statistics [provided by FMCSA in the presentation] based on organic growth?
  • Are the new carriers actually new entrants (companies with new trucks and new drivers) or just a shuffling of the deck with a new DOT number? For example, large companies could split themselves into 50 different DOT numbers, one for every state.

Budget and Resources

• Funding and budgetary constraints are big issues, especially as increasing program demands require more resources.
  • The FMCSA needs to find funding for states to maintain compliance.
  • [The FMCSA needs to] reconfigure Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) money; do not waste on roadside inspection.
  • Supplementary funding methods should be explored.
  • If government resources are not available then we will need to push responsibility onto operators.
• Additional resources will be needed to help carriers comply when new regulations are made.
• Economic realities show decreasing resources for enforcement, law, and rail partners.
• [The FMCSA needs to make] trade-offs: Are we going to spend more on enforcement versus barriers to new entrants in the market?
• [The FMCSA needs to] prioritize. [It needs to] consider the program value and return against dollars spent for safety. This way, extra funding could be allocated towards the better safety programs.
• Involve other resources. It is unrealistic to do a CR every year on all motor carriers. Instead, independent contractors to assist with inspections.
• Use 80-20 rule?80 percent of the problem is caused by 20 percent of the people.
• [The FMCSA needs to find ways to] eliminate problems from front-end and reduce time.

Communication and Customer Service

• [The FMCSA should seek to] share information at time of registration, at sale and at rental.
• [The FMCSA should] continue talking to leaders of organizations and make compliance and safety the main focus.
• Communication and information sharing between U.S. Customs and federal agencies would expedite border safety inspections.
  • U.S. Customs should share information regarding commercial vehicles.
  • Both agencies need to know what hazmat materials are crossing the border.
• Information is too difficult to get. For example, the American Trucking Association (ATA) suggested that the field operations manual should be publicly available. Currently obtaining fields operations training manual requires a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) form.

Reaching Out

• Need better publicity of existing outreach programs.
• [Having] no contact with the FMCSA until enforcement is an issue!
• Need to connect to people with responsibility and information in companies.
  • For example, the state of Georgia invites people with a ?come and see us? slogan. However, for privacy purposes, they have to talk to 6 different carriers in separate rooms.
• [The FMCSA needs to] be in touch with the needs of the industry it is serving.
• ASK DRIVERS!
  • Have a hot line for drivers.

Better Communication

• Communication needs to be proactive and not just through the internet
  • Communication cannot be limited to the internet since not all organizations have internet access.
• Need to improve communications to companies and drivers that will mitigate accidents such as accident prevention strategies and accident hotspots so drivers will be more careful in these areas.
• The FMCSA needs better and simpler communication, and to cut down the bureaucracy.
  • The FMCSA needs to be more visible and create an ease of contact. Right now [stakeholders] encounter too many recorded messages.
  • [Have a] More user friendly website
    • Have form templates available on the website
  • Have a better explanation of why a credit card is needed for a no change service.
  • Use email to distribute information to carriers
• Questionnaires, phone calls, mail outs could be used to contact carriers
  • Make sure Bilingual and ESL is considered for communication strategy.
• The FMCSA regulations should be user friendly, not in legalese.

Customer Service

• The FMSCA has an image issue it needs to deal with. Stakeholders fear retribution when providing constructive feedback.
• If a company inherits bad tendencies, it needs to have access to an FMCSA person to help the company meet compliance without being hammered.
• Be user-friendly with automated phone resources and faxing in renewal forms; we need to make things easier for us and for you.
• Make more materials available, especially for smaller carriers.

Communication of Violations

• States need to notify carriers about suspended drivers.
  • This concern has been raised in the past and the reasoning was there are ?No funds? available.
    • Maybe there are technologies to do this. For example, how much does email cost?
• States need a standardized manner, such as an Employer Violation Notification Program, to notify a carrier that a driver received a violation. Notify the carrier when drivers are stopped or cited.
  • This could work similar to the California pull notice program.

The FMCSA?s Internal Structure, Staffing

• Is the FMCSA is too top heavy, since there are not enough auditors?

Federal, Regional, State
[Also refer to Appendix A1.3 Partnerships/Partnerships with States, and Appendix 2.5 Compliance Reviews]

• Decentralize FMCSA?s efforts. The FMCSA should audit and train the state DOT staff to find the under trained and the non-reporters.
• Each service center should use the same criteria in determining when there is an enforcement case.
• Discrepancies between regions need to be smoothed out.

Inspectors and Auditors

• Designate certain auditors to audit larger companies and others for smaller carriers.
• There should be a different inspector for each CR. This might help in achieving a fairer follow-up CR.
• Bring accident preventability decision-making power back to FMCSA field investigators performing CRs, this time with preventability training.
• Standardize inspections and inspectors.
• Send carriers a questionnaire post-CR to ask about the officer?s performance.
  • Inspections are often inconsistent due to lack of knowledge. [The FMCSA] needs to review qualifications of the inspectors.
• Inspectors should have hands-on experience of sitting in a CMV.
  • This would help inspectors use information better.
  • This was part of the original outreach.
  • However, there is concern that inspections would not be objective if a close relationship is built between the inspector and inspectee.
• Inspectors should evaluate equipment as part of federal CR; currently this is the responsibility of the state only.
  • This would help determine whether maintenance records are valid, such as is done for airline inspections.
• The location of where roadside safety inspections occur is important not just to ensure that a broadness of inspections are being performed, but also to ensure the safety of the inspectors. This concern might be a training topic for law enforcement.

Goals

• Prioritize the programs with clearly stated goals; the results should drive priorities.
• Agency and industry are equally committed.
• Agency does good job of working with states and their enforcement activities.

Timing and Nature of Change Agenda

• Change is good and needs to occur more quickly than 6-8 years from now. Perhaps the FMCSA can make changes in bits and pieces.
• [There is] concern that change will take too long.
  • Change has been attempted in the past and it has not worked. Need to make sure that the change is effective.
• Start being proactive now; do not waste time trying to fix what happened last year.
  • Perhaps the FMCSA should have two groups: one to analyze ways to bring in new ideas for change and one to review existing policies, for example CDLIS.
• It?s hard to be a responsible carrier and talk about the urgency of safety when its 2004 and the program is entitled ?2010?. Symbolically that says volumes about change.
• The timeline for change needs to be cognizant of technologies passing by.
  • For example, drug and alcohol testing took 2 years; now there are newer methods.
• The FMCSA needs to change to improve credibility. The agency needs to make data, the CR selection process, and SafeStat more credible to drivers, states and industry.
• Reasons to change include:
  • Change is necessary, otherwise the industry (or FMCSA) will tread water for next few years.
  • Need to change to make organizational system more cost-effective.
  • Need to change to improve efficiency and leverage.
  • Need to change to improve accident reduction.
    • Can be done through industry root cause analysis.
  • Need to change in order to take advantage of innovation.
• The more things change, the more they stay the same.
  • There is a tremendous amount of opinion that has not been adopted [by FMCSA].

A1.3 Partnerships

• Currently, there is a lack of partnering by the FMCSA.
• It is necessary for FMCSA to expand relationships and incentives for others to partner with them.
• [Any] change needs to involve third parties.
  • The government cannot do this on its own.
  • If we do not sit down and talk together to get to a process as a community, we are not going get to compliance from the industry.
  • There needs to be partnerships between DOT and state associations during audits to join forces and share information and leverage numbers.
  • The result would be less intrusion and less time taken for audits.
• Will ?partners? include regulated parties?
• Partnership must include information sharing with the federal government so we can make proper decisions with proper information, for example, Commercial Driver?s License Information System (CDLIS).
• FMCSA needs to focus its partners on causal factors.

Why Partnerships Make Sense

• Getting industry on board and gaining their support will ease the FMCSA?s burden.
• Important to have some dependency on others, different layers working together. Many organizations such as: insurance, medical and third-party administrators (TPAs) are involved in the regulations but not in the reporting. These organizations have a wealth of knowledge about carriers at their disposal; the information is just sitting there, and not being accessed.
• [Partnerships are needed to improve] effectiveness. Partnerships are needed where carrier?s hands are tied, since regulation brings them 90 percent to safety but they need that extra 10 percent.
• It is more cost effective to work with partners.
• Core values and concern for safety are shared [among various industry groups].
• Small carriers, non-profits and trade organizations want to go beyond basic compliance to safety management, but compliance presents a huge task with little help and limited resources. We need to create a cooperative effort to help each other.
• Partnership could foster cooperation across agencies, including with local law enforcement agencies.
• [Partnership would] improve data exchange:
  • After all, information must come into FMCSA and then go back out again.
  • There needs to be continuous input from stakeholders as trucking safety changes.
• The FMCSA needs the trust and cooperation from industry for enforcement purposes. Strong consequences are needed if cooperation does not occur.

Desire for Partnerships

• Company head: we would love to be a partner with the FMCSA and get involved. We license insurance agents, so why not new entrants?
• Carriers want to be partners, not adversaries; they wish to work with the governing bodies and get the bad guys off the road.
  • [However, there is a] fear of the FMCSA oversight.
• Why is there an adversarial relationship with OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) programs? We ought to want to invite the FMCSA in to do things with us instead of dreading the required visit.

Possible Types of Partnership

• Integrate with insurance companies since trucks have to be insured, according to the law. For example, why not register a truck when getting insurance? [Also refer to Appendix section A1.1 Key Players/Insurance Companies for additional details.]
• Partnership between industry and enforcement. Leverage association partnership with:
  • Insurance companies.
  • Medical certification community.
  • Pre-pass.
  • State agencies.
• Reach out to the public.
• Partner with driving schools [Also refer to Appendix section 1.1/Key Payers/Third Parties: Commercial Driving Schools] and Mexican drivers.
• Partner with insurance companies and truck driving schools to influence the quality of new entrants.
• FMCSA should partner with the Federal Transit Authority on city bus transits. FTA currently has no enforcement arm, so city bus operations never get reviewed and it shows.
• Trucking companies should have compliance coordinators who communicate with DOT personnel to keep up-to-date with changes in regulations.
  • The focus should be on attracting companies to hire compliance coordinators that DOT trains along with the law enforcement and its own personnel. There should be an ability of all three groups to have a cooperative relationship instead of an adversarial relationship.

Partnerships With States
[Also refer to Appendix A1.1 Key Players/Law Enforcement and Appendix A2.1 Intra and Inter State Matters.]

• Partner with states, but do not lean on them. We need to work closer with states to make sure they are implementing the statutes and laws that FMCSA and Congress pass.
• Medical and license sharing information across state and international borders would be helpful.
• Regular audit and training of State officers should occur to keep statistics consistent.
• Leverage is needed to be open to additional partners. For example, the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) does a new entrance test and educates by using enforcement officers, instead use non-enforcement partners to conduct tests.
• It would be better to have the federal government maintain Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) dollars and Compliance Reviews (CRs), so that all states have consistent benefits and the same requirements.
• Different enforcement agencies read possible injuries, and accident reports differently. [Also refer to Appendix A3.2 Data/Accidents.]
• Local law enforcement should share state information, standardize reporting forms.
• Regulations need to be simple and consistent across all states.
• Build consistency across state lines: Prepass programs, overweight violations, amount of tickets, uniform points for drivers log violations.
  • The fatality goal was set for all trucks, but it did not actually reach the intra-state trucks. FMCSA must embrace that population, too.
• When the feds get updated information, send it to state enforcement. Then states can understand what they are supposed to be enforcing.
• States should notify FMCSA if an insurance agency goes out of business.

A1.4 Infrastructure, Operating Context

• Need to look at infrastructure and highways as a contributing factor to safety.
• We have an infrastructure that is at capacity. The one thing that would be the biggest help to carriers would be to improve roads.
• Secondary roads have many accidents.
• Federally funded roads are a sub-connection between investment for the best possible roads and the responsibility of users.
• For urban drivers and over the road drivers, we need to find a way to compare and equate the circumstances using something like a surface transportation classification code.
• Current infrastructure constraints include:
  • Roads at capacity, with bad congestion following a commercial vehicle accident;
  • Price of fuel going up, threatening the economics of the trucking industry.
• How about turning empty malls outside of large cities, such as New York City and Los Angeles into major distribution centers to transfer freight that is transferable from extra large trailers to smaller trucks for safer, easier deliveries?
• There has been an overlap of safety and security post-9/11.

Mechanical Safety Features in Truck Design and Technology

• FMCSA should support retrofitting, such as with wining harnesses. Retrofitting is a simple way to improve trucks mechanical safety features and technology instead of buying a new upgraded vehicle.
• The trucking industry does not have any type of 5-star safety vehicle rating for safety features like the automobile industry has for cars.
  • Make safety for drivers a priority, starting with the manufacturer.
  • In fact, there are no safety factors or standards for trucks, like survivability factors, grab rails, a good step system.
• Need to apply standard technology to all trucks; make access to these technological advances easy:
  • Detection devices that detect when trucks depart lanes.
  • Radar systems.
  • Drowsy driver detectors.
• Also implement technology on passenger cars to make them more visible to truck drivers.
• Technology is helping to elevate the problem of speeding, but governed truck engines can still be jiggered with.

APPENDIX A2. STAKEHOLDER COMMENTS REGARDING SAFETY POLICIES AND BUSINESS PROCESSES

This chapter includes comments provided by Listening Session participants around topics of policy and business processes that promote safety. The statements presented are inclusive of the substantive points made by participants on this set of topics. The goal of the compilers has been to preserve comments in their original form but, at the same time, eliminate redundancy.

A2.1 Policy

• Change ?worldview? of everything being tied to fines and staying ahead of regulations to avoid negative impressions.
• Change ?worldview? of only regulating ?top down? and garnering support from ?middle? and ?bottom? through regulations and fines.
• Focus on remediation not enforcement.
• Regulations that try to be ?one size fits all? are the biggest straight jackets. Regulations should include flexibility for scale.
• Regulations should make things safer. If a group does not have many accidents and problems, then they need to be exempted from regulations, for example, the 100-mile radius rule.

Safety as a Strategy

• Public safety should be the greatest goal so it trumps all other issues.
• CRs look at current regulations, not at safety culture or safety as a whole ongoing process.
• The majority of time is spent reviewing hours-of-service, rather than being proactive and preventive.
• All programs should promote: ?Safety pays off?.

Compliance Does Not Equal Safety

• Currently it seems FMCSA is only compliance-oriented.
• Safety management is a much broader approach than just regulations and compliance; the industry should think beyond rules and look to safety practices.
• Safety management and compliance are not necessarily connected.
  • Compliance can breed safety, but it is how people use and apply the regulations.
    • Regulations do work; the violation of a regulation is usually just a symptom of a larger problem, we must look closer to find the root cause of the violation.
• Just because a carrier is in compliance does not mean they are a ?safe? operator.
  • Completing paper work does not equal safety.

Security Issues

• FMCSA needs to review current programs and their demand on resources:
  • For example, new security background checks for hazmat carriers were implemented after 9/11. Are these necessary or do they detract from other higher priority safety and security items? Someone does not need a driver?s license to highjack a truck.

Privacy

• ACLU privacy issues could be a barrier to information sharing.
• The Big Brother aspect is a concern. We are already in a Big Brother state.
• An authorization from the driver should be needed to release personal information for background checks.

A2.2 Regulatory Oversight

• There is a direct impact of DOT presence and visibility on carriers looking for assistance and information on what they need to do to achieve compliance.
• Oversight process is very positive because there is a policy development to ensure compliance.
• Oversight can be good, but needs to have established checks and balances.
• The FMCSA is focused on licensed carriers, but can they also recognize there are unlicensed carriers running with authority?
  • Authority issues are not being enforced.
• The oversight often fails to account for industry differences. [There appears to be a] shotgun approach to regulatory compliance. [Oversight needs to] level the playing field within the industry.

How Much Regulation?

• We are asking for too much regulation; it is up to the carrier to comply and get information [to appropriate entities in timely basis].
• Too much time and resources are devoted to appeasing the legal process.
• Carriers need freedom from oversight.

Intra and Inter State Matters
[Also refer to Appendix A1.3 Partnerships/Partnerships with States, Appendix 3.2 Data/Definitions]

• [The FMCSA needs] to explore cross-state issues.
• [There exists] disparity between intra and interstate carriers. Federal standards should apply to all because many fatalities are from the intrastate population. Federal regulations of intrastate carriers are needed.
  • In order justify the need for change, FMCSA will need to focus on reducing overall collisions.
  • Perhaps some intrastate carriers are turning back federal money because they do not have the personnel to complete CRs.
• Encourage states to expand their partners. Funding could be tied to the performance of intrastate carriers.
• Intercity versus intracity carriers should have different standards:
  • Exposure in intercity is larger. Exposure information can probably be obtained from insurance providers.
  • Miles driven should be taken into account.
• Many states already differentiate between intra and interstate. The FMCSA should take advantage of existing defined differentiations between intra and interstate and depend on the states to scrutinize.

Hours-of-Service

• Some companies are decreasing break time in order to not go over the 14 hour rule, which is often caused by congested traffic or a mechanical breakdown.
  • Some companies tell drivers to log the time they are ?relieved from duty.? For example when a driver is waiting for the load to fill this can be logged as time ?relieved from duty;? this clause needs to be explained better.
  • This creates an unsafe environment. [An alternative to this rule is to] install a voluntary break per hours driven.
• Current ?hours-of-service? creates a conflict in jurisdiction and laws; do companies obey state law or the FMCSA?
• Most hours-of-operation violations occur during nights and weekends since they are not usually monitored.
  • There must be a PRESENCE if we hope to curb violations!!

Hours-of-Service and Shipper influence

• Hours-of-service helped to modify shipper and customer behavior but not fully across all shippers.
  • Carriers have dropped shippers but other carriers will pick them up.
• [Safety] needs to be a partnership. I have had drivers call me when their hours-of-service are up, but the shipper wants them off their property; what is that driver supposed to do? Partnerships could resolve issues like this. We have accepted the 14-hour rule and time constraints.
  • The industry needs to manage time requirements and restraints with realistic expectations better.
  • Some of the existing conflicts arise between: could be resolved through negotiating and trying to resolve conflicts. It is reasonable to get to gether and talk about partnering, and look at the abusive relationship between the shipper and the carrier in order to negotiate a workable solution.

Licensing
Standardize or Federalize Licenses

• States have different authority to license people. [Instead, standardized or federalized licenses] of both trucks and cars [are needed] for uniform requirements, compliance, and public awareness since they share the road.
• [Standardized or federalized licenses] would help collect data on bad drivers.
  • Some states are linking current health with CDL.
  • Arizona currently issues CDLs that are valid for 25 years!
• Form a fully consolidated program that addresses language requirements.
  • Eliminate the ability to authorize licenses in multiple languages, if the driver cannot read English, they will not be able to read many road signs.
• There should be a federal licensing requirement for interstate drivers as a way to track drivers that are jumping around. New employers do checks each time a new driver comes to work for them.
• Develop a national CDL drivers license:
  • Carriers would have to invest in drug testing and other costs, but should be able to pull data from central database.
    • The current process is time consuming and costly.
  • Information on CDLs should follow the driver; all other information on the driver should be open to carriers.
• Tie drug and alcohol testing to CDL licensing so that if a driver refuses to test or does not pass, they cannot operate the vehicle.
• Require training before licenses can be renewed.
• A CDL and a working license needs to be one and the same. In some instances truck drivers do not have a personal license but have a CDL.

Standardize Term ?CMV?

• Right now there are 2 definitions in the statutes:
  • [The FMCSA] needs to determine when a CMV-related license is needed and the license requirements.

A2.3 Incentives versus Enforcement

• [The FMCSA needs to] balance enforcement with incentives.
  • Sanctions are now more of a stick than a carrot.
• Bad is always recorded, what about good? Is there incentive or reward for compliance?
• The focus [of compliance] should be reward-based.
  • There is a competitive disadvantage to those who are compliant. No advantage to being a compliant carrier.
  • Perhaps FMCSA could implement some type of review every few years via an International Standards Organization (ISO 9000) voluntary program in order to be certified. That would give an advantage and incentive to go through the process.
• [Moneys from] fines are collected from one place and money sent to another. Money needs to be dedicated where it is collected not shifted to another area.

Remediation versus Enforcement

• Focus on remediation not enforcement; the goal should be to make industry better, not just to punish it.
• Voluntary compliance from a company: a company asks for a review, it is then given a period of time to fix problems.
• [The FMCSA needs to] shift from crunching numbers to identifying and managing risk as a prerequisite for getting a license. Give carriers an opportunity to correct things not just by penalizing them. Things can change over time, but what are the markers of change? We need different levels of review. We need to identify and manage risk instead of holding to and requiring a certain number of inspections.
• If a carrier fails make a CR, [The FMCSA] should have them pay for their own remediation program:
  • [In addition, FMCSA should] require follow-up to get off of their probationary period, and if this does not happen the carrier will be put Out of-Service (OOS).
• Companies [often] have a difficult time solving problems. Often it is easier to pay fine than to try to resolve the problem.

Enforce the Current Laws

• Adjust the level of enforcement aimed at non-commercial drivers; have all 50 states enforce the current laws. Make money available for more law enforcement and allocate a new fund specifically for this purpose and hold the fund accountable for the results.
• [There should be] more enforcement for the smaller carriers.
• Sometimes a truck or carrier is taken out-of-service but the driver is not given a ticket.
• Focus on road enforcement for speeding, erratic driving, driver responsiveness and causing accidents, instead of lack of compliance or vehicle condition.

Balancing Rewards and Penalties

• [The FMCSA needs to use] incentives; it should not depend upon just using a hammer approach.
• Balance incentives with fines. For example, when a company makes efforts to improve its rating or non-complying ways, a percentage of their fine could come back to them for their safety program.
• Adjust fines [based on commitment to safety improvement] (in other words, allow for a consent order):
  • Assess a high fine, and then give an incentive to reduce the fine by measuring progress over time.
  • For example; an enforcement officer conducts a review and fines carrier $5,000. Instead of requiring the $5,000 payment, give the option to spend $3,000 on safety and $1,000 on fines.
  • Charging fines puts people out of business and does not fix the problem. An incentive would be to give carriers a way to reduce their fine.
  • Put the fines into an escrow account so that it can be reused.

Rewards

• Currently, management?s response to violations is not given any credit.
• There needs to be a rewards system that is full cycle and rewards everyone from the company to the driver. Such a system could have effects on:
  • Insurance credits
  • Tax credits/deductions
  • Vehicle registration fees should be based on performance; otherwise it could be taking money away from improvements.
  • Pre-pass privileges including approval and suspension.
  • Congestion mitigation programs could offer low cost access to city centers and other high traffic areas.
  • Consider all the fees that are applied to carriers and determine which ones could be structured as rewards. Could be 1 cent per gallon on International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA).
• Recognize good carriers in the same way the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) voluntary protection program does.
• Create market incentives for carriers to exceed minimum standards:
  • For example: OSHA?s Voluntary Protection Program and DOD?s 5-tier rating systems.
  • Offer marketing for customers who use good carriers.
• Use positive reinforcement; instead of focusing on the bad companies, find out best practices of good companies and publicize their performance.
  • Pre-pass is a great way to award proactive, safe carriers.
  • Credit and deposit incentives
• Provide free decals when inspected vehicles have no violations. The decal says: ?you don?t have to be inspected for another 60 days?; the decal should be effective even if a driver is pulled over during the 60 days accountability. The original officer?s name should be present on the decal if there are any questions.
  • Hopefully the decal will cut down on inspecting the same trucks over and over since it will show a truck has already successfully passed inspection.

Penalties

• Fines, it is important that fines and penalties be:
  • Equal across locales.
  • Progressive.
  • Fit the crime.
• [It is important to recognize that fines due to violations] may be cost of doing business to larger carriers.
  • FMCSA sanctions are too light when compared to EPA and OSHA fines.
  • States need to take a more active role in disqualifying drivers with serious violation records.
  • 45/60 day shut downs are effective.
  • However, not eliminating bad carriers accomplishes nothing.
• Some of the things vehicles are placed out-of-service for are unbelievable.
• Implement harsh, quick (instant), severe penalties for violators, including losing their authority. Out-of-service options strengthen penalty enforcement.
• Create more visibility of enforced penalties for not complying.
• Revoke authority of people working without DOT numbers after a certain amount of time.
• Should ignorance be an acceptable excuse for non-compliance?
• Raise minimum level of financial liability.
  • The last financial update was in 1995.
  • Outdated regulations take away from the main goal.

A2.4 Roadside Inspections

• Roadside inspections and out-of-service are not so effective.
• Ratings are skewed. Good inspections are not always documented; there is a false distance between those in and out of compliance.
• Roadside inspections are not always a good indicator of compliance since they are inconsistent and discretionary.
  • Inconsistencies are also due to lack of knowledge by enforcement, FMCSA needs to review qualifications of the inspectors.
• Some states use inspection fines for income sources; level one is not the same everywhere. FMCSA can partner with carriers to improve the industry.
• Roadside inspections should involve:
  • Profile by commodity.
  • TRANSPASS₁ on right track.
• Ways to improve inspection include:
  • Intentionally send vehicles with known mechanical problems and see if they are discovered during inspections.
  • Build on DOD inspections, state, insurance and other inspections.
  • Record driver inspections on video.
  • Use of Virtual weigh-stations
    • Camera and scales, there would be no need for enforcement personnel, there is a pilot program like this in Florida.
    • Virtual and accessible weight stations would make it harder to avoid inspections.
• Would roadside inspections have the authority to place vehicles out-of -service?
  • Would this violation be given to drivers or carriers?
  • What if a driver is out-of-service but has to move the truck?

A2.5 Compliance Reviews

Spirit and Purpose

• Compliance review (CR) versus safety review. Reach out to carriers: teach them about differences, checklist of requirements and triggers, etc..
  • More interaction is needed with carriers, especially to small carriers in order to help them comply.
  • New entrant program has safety reviews (SRs) which are more a combination of education and compliance, [which is a good model].
• CRs should be more positive than punitive.
• CR is good way to ensure compliance to rules but it is not a good measure of safety programs or behaviors.
• CRs need to be more proactive. Trucking companies should be able to be checked periodically for compliance.
• Companies that continue to violate the regulations should be held accountable. But remember you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
• FMCSA needs to become more specific on what it is looking for:
  • Make sure criteria are predictive.
  • Have a system in place in advance.
  • Tailor the review based on what needs to be inspected.
  • Execute a series of things that truck companies are supposed to be doing.
• FMCSA needs to have a way to communicate what will be the focus of inspections even if the carriers have not had a CR.

Educate Around the CR

• A CR and its involvement comes after the fact, such as after an unsatisfactorily audit or a after new carrier is introduced to the program. The FMCSA should be starting off with conversations around remediation and not from a corrective action approach after a violation has been committed.
  • There should be more education and less punishment.
• CRs need to be more of a training and remediation tool and less of a check-up on compliance and a penalizing system.
• There is no educational assessment or intermediate steps before a CR. Carriers cannot call and ask FMCSA to come in without doing a full compliance audit.
  • Help us [carriers] to fix inadequacies before the CR is administered and we are fined.
  • There needs to be an educational step in conjunction with warning letter and fines. Instead carriers gain safety proficiency knowledge as a result of a warning.
• Providing educational seminars would be helpful to the industry.
  • There needs to be an understanding that some violations are more serious than others.
• Shouldn?t we also participate in education or communicate best practices? Why stop with CR?s? Compliance is used as a minimum.

How well does the CR work?

Works well

• CRs are good:
  • Good tool, welcomed by carriers
  • Good for education.
  • Good for violations and roadside inspections.
  • Effective for those that experience audits.
  • Effective for changing short term behavior, on a case by case basis.
  • Great for telling carrier what to do, not how to get it done. Specify safety roles to streamline CR and process things quicker.
• CRs were tracked for a 3 year period and it was found CRs are effective when addressing driver and out-of-service issues, but not with other issues.
• CRs; when performed correctly are effective in changing operations.
• Some carriers understand the importance of the thoroughness of a good safety program.

Requires Improvement

• CRs are perceived by motor carriers as ineffective and punitive, especially if the point of the CR is reducing fatalities.
  • Effectiveness of would improve if there were motivation to compliance: need a way to show carriers the value of compliance other than a fine.
    • How to save money.
    • How to do audits.
    • How to reduce accidents.
• Perception is that the process is not impartial. There is a feeling of partiality and the targeting of companies and how CRs are carried out. This might be good for consistency but it does not feel impartial to people in the industry.
• CRs are limited, reactionary and time-consuming.
• CR?s are not working. Company accident data is not cross-referenced against hour-of-service violations or the citations used for the CR process.
• Oversight is data-driven, but the CR is not risk-based so this is inefficient. CRs do not just go into a carrier that has been flagged with an issue and work on that target issue. Instead, the CR goes through all six factors.
  • [The FMCSA should] concentrate on out-of-service carriers and target their reason for being out-of-service.
  • [Have] Clearer targets and be more efficient.
  • The CR is too predictable of a process.
  • CRs provide carriers with a roadmap of what to destroy.
• Inspectors keep coming back even when a company has a satisfactory rating.
• The government cannot continue down this path of inspecting everyone by themselves. Enforcement officers need to focus on problematic carriers.

CRs are Resource Intensive

• Amount of resources required to administer a CR needs to be re-evaluated.
  • FMCSA needs to look at alternatives that do not require direct contact, especially for those who have good safety programs: remote review conducted on-line, websites, local and state communications should all become part of the program.
• Simplify the CR. Target the limited resources problem: carriers with good outcomes should have incentives to avoid a CR if they continue to have good outcomes.
• There is not adequate time or officers to administer CRs.
• Oversight process is labor intensive; a CR should address a smaller random sampling of documents.
• Accept DOD rating system to decrease the work load of FMCSA. Compliance reviews are equal to or more important than DOT ratings. If there was a DOD rating system, maybe making exceptions from the DOT rating would save manpower.

CRs are Inconsistently Executed

• [There exists a] lack of enforcement uniformity in writing violations for SafeStat. [There is] marginal, limited in scope, inconsistent enforcement at the federal, state, legislative, and judicial levels.
• FMCSA needs to perform CRs with consistency and continuity with both small and large companies all across the country.
• CR qualification and training is inconsistent.
• Auditors should at least be on time and focused on the task:
  • What information should carriers have ready for the inspector when they arrive? Coordination between both parties must take place in order to be respectful of time demands.

?One Size Fits All? is not enough!

• Currently there is an all or nothing selection process. Flags are raised when the data is analyzed to find trends and repeat offenders.
• Extend to electronic screening like pre-pass
  • This should apply to interstate carriers only.
• [The FMCSA should] conduct smaller-scaled audits aimed at specific departments of a company and make the scoring from that audit a condition for renewing certification.
• Perhaps two types of reviews are needed:
  • A specific CR for establishing a safety rating.
  • Another review for new entrants would allow for an inspection without penalty.
• Streamline the CRs by conducting more preliminary checks; if something is suspicious then administer a full blown inspection.
• There should be a streamlined CR for complaints, that is more focused:
  • Because complaints-driven CRs are not streamlined, FMCSA cannot meet more carriers because the CRs are too labor-intensive.
  • Carriers need to be told the nature of complaints or type of complaint so they can take corrective action.
  • However, they do not need to know the identity of person filing the complaint.
  • Complaint-driven system is prone to abuse.
• Develop a different type or level of a CR.
  • At state level they look at your record.
  • Implement levels of CRs that distinguish between levels of service.
  • It is a waste of resources to have state and federal CRs.

Selection for Review

• The reality is there are not enough resources to inspect all the small carriers; [the FMCSA needs to] identify and focus on the worst offenders.
  • Choose carriers to be audited by the 80/20 rule.
• CR?s are not random and there is industry implication that they should be.
• Use data to determine which carriers to audit, for example 25 percent new entrants, 25 percent on the A list, and 25 percent on the B list.
  • Need sophisticated search engines like the one in Texas [to cull through criteria]. Identification should find models to identify carriers to target.
• For complaint-triggered CRs, once a complaint is received, there should be an intermediate step between the carrier and the FMCSA, prior to setting up the CR.
• Currently, the CR filtering methodology is arbitrary, only X was triggered but a whole review is done.
  • Streamline process to obtain a rating, it takes too long to get CR.
• More third party groups need CRs, however, there are volume concerns.

Selection Criteria

• CR triggers should include the following criteria:
  • Insurance cancellation,
  • Operating authority,
  • Out-of-service violations,
  • Maintenance records,
  • Crash data.
• Some triggers should trigger a full review while others should trigger a streamlined review.
• Data weighting and scoring for inspection selection needs to be addressed:
  • SafeStat does not identify the correct carriers for CR.
  • SafeStat formula penalizes growing carriers.
• Change SafeStat to trigger CRs for smaller carriers with low Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) per year.
• SafeStat only looks at carriers with bad marks; the system is reactive not proactive.
• Vehicles tagged with out-of-service penalty need to be inspected during a review.
• Performance as measured by NCA₂ values should override individual complaints against a company thereby triggering a compliance review.

Selection process does not seem to target ?problem? carriers

• Some carriers are visited again and again, while others are not reviewed at all.
• It seems like carriers who are doing things right are targeted which makes it harder to find carriers that are not safe.
• Currently the selection process for carrier CRs is inconsistent and undefined.
  • FMCSA needs to deal with complaints in a standard way since they prompt reviews.
  • Re-define process of investigating complaints, frivolous complaints can trigger a review.
  • Non-frivolous complaints need to be defined and frivolous ones omitted. Non-substantial and frivolous complaints should not warrant a CR.
• FMCSA needs to find better ways to identify bad carriers.

Selection process appears uneven between small versus large carriers

• The 2 percent does not include mom and pops carriers.
• Train and change the system to prevent the ?out of site, out of mind? approach to small carriers.
• The FMCSA currently goes where they can get the biggest bang for their buck. The FMCSA chooses the bigger companies with thousands of trucks rather than the small truck companies; that is where the 2 percent comes from. The larger carriers are pretty much compliant since they are always inspected.
  • Concentrate more on smaller carriers that do not have strong safety programs.
  • Smaller companies get lost easily as they do not tend to join associations or go to meetings.
• Small carriers are not tapped for CRs. Big carriers are disproportionately tapped for CRs.
  • The reality is that small carriers are probably more likely to have safety defects.

What should be included?

• CRs do not focus on the driver.
  • Involve the driver more in CR process but maybe not on other side.
    • Interviews can be used to determine more about the company.
    • Listen to the drivers.
• If the out-of-service score is high in SafeStat, then specifically review that area; do not go through the entire CR process.
  • Focus audit on the factor that is the safety concern.
• [There should be] more focus on documentation of driver training.
• Check insurance files periodically.
• Willingness to comply should be the focus.
• Interstate accidents are not captured in CR; [they should be].
• FMCSA needs to restructure the CR process to actually look at recordable accidents and what carriers have in place to not only address issues but prevent them.
• During Compliance Reviews (CR) shippers and brokers are forgotten and the entire burden falls on the carrier. [Also refer to Appendix A1.1 Key Players/Shipper, Brokers, and Receivers.]

Timing

• [The FMCSA should] set a specific time frame goal to conduct reviews, such as once every x months. For example,
  • All the time
  • At least once or twice a year
  • Every ten years is not often enough
• [The FMCSA should] set specific events to trigger when to act:
  • When a driver has been in more than one accident in 90-days.
  • When a vehicle that is out-of service receives violations over 30-days.
  • Before you are granted authorization authority; note: this assessment should be a requirement before the authorization authority is granted.
  • When a company has been given a ?bad? collision record based on internal an audit or review of recent history.
  • When a company gets an ?unsatisfactory? rating or a ?conditional? rating within 180 day timeframe.
• The length of the CR experience varies from 2 days to 6 weeks.

A2.6 Education

• The government should not spend money to educating a population that should be responsible for its own education.
• Education done by 3rd parties such as JJ Keller is perhaps not as effective as training done by the FMCSA directly.
• The FMCSA should provide computer interactive training on their website.
• Train officers at the borders to prevent invalid violations from being issued.
• [The FMCSA should] use CSA 2010 to help with education.
• [The FMCSA should] educate first and then follow-up with compliance fines and even prison sentences.
• Certifications are important because some people know what they are supposed to be doing; others do not. Suggestions:
  • Mandatory certifications.
  • Require each company to have a safety official specializing in regulations.

Targeted Education

Young Drivers

• Provide more education to high-schoolers.
  • How many accidents are caused by young drivers?
  • Perhaps add questions to driver education tests regarding commercial vehicles.
• To address turnover rates and the shortage of drivers, start vocational education in high schools to develop potential drivers; identify transportation as a viable career path; stop them from doing things between the ages of 18-21 that would prevent them being hired as drivers.

Carriers
[Also refer to Appendix A1.1 Key Players/Carriers/New Entrants.]

• Provide formal training when companies seek to be set up that has useful educational and informational material to new entrants; like the CR.
  • Right now, useful materials for new entrants have to be purchase from 3rd party entities and not all new entrants are going to pay for useful materials or even know where to buy it. The current free versions are not user-friendly.
• Educate carriers about how issues and violations are reported:
  • Currently regulations are very technical and hard to understand.
  • Currently there are mock CRs in place for new entrants to see what actually occurs.
  • States do not always know the difference between vehicle types and how to report crashes.
• Require leaders to go to regional safety education seminars sponsored by DOT and trade partners this could help educate on hiring, inspection procedures, and accident measures.
• More education and assistance for smaller companies is needed. It is not that they do not want to be compliant but they do not know how to comply because they are unaware of regulations and lack resources. ?They don?t know what they don?t know?.
• Letters are not informative; carriers don?t know what they are supposed to be doing.

Motoring Public
[Also refer to Appendix A1.1 Key Players/The Motoring Public]

• Educate the public about driving on the roads with trucks.
• Bring back NO ZONE campaign. Work together, educate about highway hazards.
  • Include sharing the road with trucks and buses for non-commercial drivers as part of basic defensive driving techniques taught in driver?s education.

Commercial Drivers
[Also refer to Appendix A1.1 Key Players/Drivers]

• [There should exist] a national standardized program for all drivers to update skills every two years:
  • Driver schools only teach enough for drivers to pass the CDL test.
  • Full responsibility to train the drivers falls on the company.
  • Other modes of transportation such as; airplanes and trains go through standardized, remedial training while the trucking industry does not.
  • [There should exist a] minimum 12-week schooling for new drivers. The training schedule should be split up for 8 weeks of time backing and 4 weeks of learning the rules.
• What is the relationship between driver behavior and the effectiveness of driver training?
• [Education needs to] start on state level
• Provide more comprehensive driver training on an on-going basis.
• Have an FMCSA education program for drivers instead of truck association programs.
• Enforcement officers in position of educating drivers on hours-of-service should be the carriers? responsibility not the officers?.
• FMCSA could use a review and input on safety training, it would be helpful to know what works and what does not so that appropriate dollars are redirected to education and enforcement.
  • Feds have the ability to do the research and develop good education courses.
  • What is the goal?
    • To get safer drivers on the road or to certify training?

APPENDIX A3. STAKEHOLDER COMMENTS REGARDING SAFETY INFORMATION

This chapter covers comments provided by Listening Session participants around topics about the use of data and information to improve safety. The statements presented are inclusive of the substantive points made by participants on this set of topics. The goal of the compilers has been to preserve comments in their original form but, at the same time, eliminate redundancy.

A3.1 Performance Standards

• Oversight should look at safety performance not regulatory performance.
  • It is questionable whether there is a correlation between regulatory performance and actual safety result s in overall highway safety.
  • Statistics show that 65 percent of accidents are passenger car related.
• FMCSA needs an accurate picture of what is happening out there. The problem we have had since moving to a performance-based organization is we have never reached that because of data issues:
  • No consistency around the country; no consistent delivery of data despite the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center?s best efforts.
  • State report cards are all over the place, there needs to be a single system.
  • FMCSA will never be able to be a model if it does not have accurate data.
• What matters is on the road performance!
  • States are the only entities that can disqualify a driver.
  • States need to disqualify drivers. If they were doing their job, we wouldn?t be working this issue.
  • What about giving carriers support in disqualifying drivers?
    • For example, we could protect them from litigation.
• One causal issue is the dependence on federal regulation focusing more on results. What are the individual companies? tolerances to loss and poor performance? Create means to assess that as well.
• All crashes are bad. There seems to be an implication that there are good crashes and bad crashes.
• The FMCSA should focus on performance and establish performance standards. If a company is operating safely, they should concentrate on performance such as roadside inspections. SafeStat is a good start, but needs to be corrected and updated in places.
  • I disagree, the current model is reactive not proactive. Performance is [measured] after the crash.
  • Performance is in real-time. If I have a good safety process in place, then I am performing up to the standard.
• [There should be] more performance standards instead of prescriptive standards, for example:
  • Preventable accident rates must not exceed x, reportable collisions must not exceed y, drivers drug screening must be of z standard.
  • Brakes must be able to stop a vehicle within a certain distance.

A3.2 Data

• The FMCSA is a central focal point for data used by industry.
• Data needs to be better, the quality of data is non-existent and it is not timely.
• Information needs to be uniform, simple, accurate.
  • For example, currently, it is hard to compare data points of fatalities between bus crashes and carriers.
• Data should not equal the image of a document.
• Why is data not specific to the individual driver? The driver has the most significant effect on the operation of the vehicle and the carrier?s rating. Need to provide statistics to driver annually or carrier prior to audit.
• Use data to discriminate the problem children and then monitor them.
• Just because you can gather so many data points does not mean that you need all the data that is collected.
• [The FMCSA] needs all of the following three types of information to reduce crash rates (as reported in the Wisconsin study):
  • Size and weight
  • Roadside
  • CR
• In addition, FMCSA needs to examine carriers, shippers, drivers and look at the whole issue [of safety].
  • If we only consider one segment, we lack balance and focus.

Measures

• Measure data at its lowest level, down to the component level.
• Correct the measures, the search can be systemized; we have a lot of surrogates but not a lot of correct measures.
• Measuring safety factors is much more complex then the current formula allows.
• FMCSA needs to ensure that there is correlation between what we want to be measuring and what we are measuring.
• Crashes are an outcome; everything else should be driven from that outcome. Focus on the regulations that are most likely to prevent the outcomes.
• Avoid easy measures; focus on finding meaningful measures.
• Mechanical defects is not as high of a leverage measure.
• Establish a benchmark for total collisions per miles driven; OSHA?s data could be used as a baseline for this measure.

Data-Driven Factors

• There needs to be more annual data flowing directly from carriers to the FMCSA, such as:
  • RISLER - annual drug and alcohol statements and the number of company drug tests.
  • Number of formal driver training programs
• Track historical data on drivers, company owners and shippers:
  • This information should be accessible to carrier?s safety directors only.
  • Have companies update driver information whenever they [drivers] leave.
  • Possibly partner with PAC .

Accidents

• Crash indicators are the best measure of safety.
  • Base it on a scale determined by the driving environment or operational circumstances. For example, it is the commercial vehicle?s fault? Currently crash indicators are just fatality numbers; they should indicate whether it was a preventable fatality.
  • Preventable accidents should be measured and part of a goal we need to measure what trucks can control.
• Crash rate measurements need to be a standardized system:
  • Based on mileage, not on the number of vehicles.
  • 1 or 2 unfortunate instances will give a high Safety Evaluation Area (SEA) average.
  • In the Texas standard accident report forms have a box that says ?possible injury.? It must be checked even if no one was transported to the hospital. This creates inaccurate data.
• Crash rate favors large carriers.
• Measure all accidents when calculating accident rates.
  • Reportable accidents need to be included versus just ?recordable? accidents.
    • Question of resources: Who will review the reportable accidents?
    • Also need to change what is a reportable accident because many accidents are not considered ?reportable?. [Also refer to Appendix A3.2 Data/Definitions.]
  • What categories should be used?
    • Chargeable
    • Preventable
• Accommodate ?fault? of accidents.
  • Some accidents are not the fault of the operator and data needs to indicate avoidable accident; if an accident is unavoidable is it fair to say that the carrier is unsafe?
    • No, because it was an unavoidable accident, carriers should not be fined, drivers cannot be held accountable for other people?s actions.
  • ?At fault? versus ?Not at fault?:
    • If not at fault should it count against fleet?
• More detailed post-accident information is needed to help predict trends.
  • What contributed to the accident?
  • What are the liability implications if preventability is strong?
  • Liability and preventability are two different things when it comes to the investigation.
  • Liability is a strong disincentive to conducting an investigation.
    • Oftentimes, carriers want to become included in National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation team for protection.

Shipper History

• Time loaded versus time carrier left [should be recorded] and needs to be automated in order to be accurate.
• [Incidents of] unsafe loading, packaging [should be recorded]. Apply hazmat shipper principles.
• Include shipper on accident reports.
  • FMCSA needs to consider the frequency and classes of accidents and how the shippers relate.
  • Can the shipper be reliably identified?

Driver History

• Identify ways to watch and measure driver behavior in a way that is performance-based, rather than statistically-based, and are key in accident prevention.
  • Number of accidents for which the driver is at fault.
    • Right now preventable accidents are weakly defined.
  • Number of moving violations per time frame.
    • Average violations
    • Different kinds of violations
  • Number of security violations.
  • Number of out-of-service violations.
  • Results of Drug and alcohol testing.
  • Results of Roadside inspections and driver error statistics.
  • Driver behavior.
  • DOT number to driver?s license.
  • Positive things to track:
    • Safe miles.
    • Lack of violations.
  • Changes in Motor Vehicle Records (MVRs), number and type of violations are indicators.
• Currently, there is no record from any previous instance of failing an alcohol test; if carriers knew about at-risk people, hopefully they could do something.

Carrier History

• Capture data on driver turnover and use the data to see where carriers stack up.
• The number of personnel hours used should be measured as well mileage.
• A stronger emphasis on the history record of a company is important; trending is a key factor for insurance coverage of carriers.

Operational Characteristics

• Safety performance and operational characteristics should be the priority [in data collected].

Equipment History

• Maintenance records should include details such as truck cleanliness.
• Information on the age of the fleet is needed, especially if it is not updated frequently.
• Size and weight measure should be normalized based on the location of the citation.

Logbooks

• Logbook rules need to be reevaluated.
  • For example, After 14 hours, allow for 3 hour sleep breaks instead of 2 hour sleep break in order to make this more versatile; otherwise people will look for a way to get around current law.
  • Replace logbook process with fatigue management or onboard recorder.
• Drivers need to be educated on of use of the new logbook.

Definitions

• A national vocabulary is needed to level the playing field.
• Definitions are arbitrary, inadequate and not uniform.
  • FOTM is not available.
• There are problems with the definition of DOT reportable accidents.
  • The current definition is whether the accident involved a towing or transport for anyone sustaining an injury. The feeling is that injury accidents are often pre-emptive and not re-active.
  • Private property accidents are not uniformly accounted for across the country.
• The industry should define standards for a ?competent persons?, the same way the medical industry does.
• Define influence. What part of industry are you trying to influence? How? And in what way? Direction?
• Definitions would help when making comparisons. Currently all carrier types and sizes are mixed together. What are appropriate categories?
• Decide on a consistent class of vehicles or ?trucks?: motor coach, school bus or cutaways. There are some inappropriate exemptions such as gypsy operations and dump trucks. In addition, DOT classifications are different for private fleets, LTL, TL, intermodel, and shippers and logistics providers.
• Define risk: Hazmat is not more risky than people carriers. Risk should not be defined by what is carried because risk issues trigger CRs.
  • The political environment also affects this.
• Define current regulations, what does it means for a company to have ?appropriate safety controls in place?.
• Define systems so carriers have a roadmap of guidelines to set up business.

Data Collection

• Establish a system to capture data accurately.
  • Complete MCS150 form every year to capture updated information.
  • Capture updated information from insurance companies as well.
• Relieve the data gathering burden by asking for information from motor carriers that will indicate if they are in compliance. This could be like an IQ test for a company. If a company has 100 drivers and only 10 are being randomly tested for drugs, this indicates a problem.
• Method of collecting information needs to be dual-tracked.
  • Use technology for those with access and accommodate carriers that do not have access.
• Data should be kept in real-time to help trigger action.
• A single form is needed to collect data consistently in a single reporting format system that is loaded regular and timely fashion.
  • Use MCS150 but update it; add more safety questions and include company specific data.
  • Use a single form to file complaints.
  • Use a single for CRs.
• Fund states to capture data, collect and report moving violations data.
• [There is] too much emphasis on the honor system versus documented records.
• Carriers could input safety program information into a computer system to lessen number of on-site reviews.
  • Disagree; some carriers are so new they do not know what to put in the system, education and information is needed; a website or manual would be helpful.

Data Management

• This not big deal; carriers are prepared to keep information updated:
  • Under the current program data errors cannot be changed.
  • Data queue is the key.
  • Need a way to update information on website.
• ?Least is best;? if we have received several clean records we need a way to show the updated records. The ability to affect the full picture allows you to update good news.
• Data stratification needs to specify driver types, where they drive.
• Software can help organize this information and make records more uniform, and easily searchable.

Legal Issues around Information Privacy

• There is a public outcry to allow safety data to go across company lines.
• Who owns information in the [on-board] recorder?
• Who owns the data [a database]?
• Right now companies have to hold the information close and hidden. In addition, the government is not releasing all the information.
• In addition, there exists an issue of public safety versus private safety.
  • There needs to be a referee regarding the violation of a driver?s right to privacy.

Accuracy of Information

• Examples of inaccurate data are:
  • Some states are missing DOT numbers.
  • Someone [I knew] recently did a search on the Analysis & Information (A&I) website for a company and it was not there.
• Way in which to make data more accurate include:
  • Focus more on using data that comes from a dependable source such as DOT, insurance coverage information, roadside citations, and inspection data.
  • Hold states accountable on crashes and roadside data.
• Get an accurate number and census of carriers,
  • Start with a clean slate. Know who has been accounted for and eliminate duplicates and old carriers.
  • Remove non-active carriers from the system. An outdated database inaccurately increases the carrier population.
  • Obtain addresses of motor carriers so there is a correct census.
• Ensure the data quality by making comparisons of apples to apples versus apples to oranges:
  • Every state varies; need consistency with tracking violations.
  • Cities too; city, states, counties and feds need to be on the same page.

Timeliness of Information
[Also refer to Appendix A3.4 Ratings/Lifecycle of Ratings.]

• One problem is the static nature of the data. A conditional rating in October 2004 may not have been updated since October 2000. The data is only a snapshot. There must be a dynamic rating, pre-pass system where the score can change daily if need be.
• Operators need to update their information. Currently, neither party is updating the system. For example, the FMCSA needs to know if a carrier just added 10 trucks.
• What is online-real time? We should get information regularly but we should not be subjected to regular, constant, continuous watching by the government
  • Does it mean devices in all [of] my trucks?

Correcting Information

• It is hard to correct wrong data. It is hard to correct mistakes on the on-line system.
• If data is challenged there should be 30 days to fix it or have it removed from the site so that people are not penalized during the time it takes to prove and correct the data.
  • [The FMCSA] would need to keep track of the data appeals process and of the date that is challenged.
• Notification of record change should be automatic.
• [The FMCSA needs to] provide a better avenue to contest inconsistencies.
• [The FMCSA needs to] figure out how to protect the data, while still providing stakeholders access.

Data Analysis

• Accident data [should be] compared against citations issued and hours worked.
• [The FMCSA should] compare companies of the same ratio and classification by industry segments, there would most likely be 10 segments.
• FMCSA needs to look at trends over time; annually.
• [The FMCSA should] consider incidents as predictor of crashes and accidents, not just pay attention to fatality rates.
• [The FMCSA should] focus data collection and analysis on program effectiveness and causation factors.
• Are crashes related to drugs, and are other issues being targeted?
• Targeting hot spots, top 3, 5 and 10 problems and going over the big bang issues.
• [The FMCSA should] breakdown fatalities by weight classification.
• [The FMCSA should] conduct root cause analysis.
  • Find out what is actually causing the driver to cause the accidents.
  • There are causality issues:
    • Very few crashes relate to drugs.
    • Hours-of-service and fatigue are different and need to be separated.
    • Very few accidents are because of mechanical malfunctions.
    • The enforcement community often emphasizes the wrong thing.
    • Human error is a factor even when all the rules are followed.
    • Preventability does not equal causality.
• Statistics show that 70 percent of truck fatalities are caused by cars, programs need to focus on that 70 percent. Find someone to partner with; like existing drivers? education programs.
  • There is concern that studies that prove they can assign 65 percent [or more] of fault to passenger cars might have flawed sample sizes.
• The carrier is responsible: it is a problem if we constrain our thinking to the belief that the carrier is the sole source for all safety problems, we need to think broader:
  • Involve other data to access performance.
  • Look at the lowest level of data.
  • Look at what is going on:
    • What is causing crashes?
    • What is actually causing problems?
• [The FMCSA also needs to perform] lesser type of analysis in order to catch the low lying fruit.
• It would be helpful if the data compared carriers to the national average.
• There are performance data points in place that can be used.
  • Need to figure out how to use this information.
  • Look at organizations that are the statistical outliers.
  • Earlier analysis of accidents showed that time of days was a factor.
• There is some linkage between MVR records and driving/drivers.
• Small carriers are over-represented in the current statistics.
• Data is skewed for smaller carriers.

Dissemination of Information

• The system could have great value if rating comparisons were done to inform organizations of their placement within the industry.
• Data should be available but it needs to be explained.
• The data on safety is used for business decisions and for marketing.
  • Some carriers share their SafeStat results.
• Accuracy is important when disseminating information, while inaccuracy causes great harm.
  • The regulated are responsible to prove information presented is inaccurate before information will be changed.
  • 15 percent of out-of-service data have issues and are difficult and often impossible to fix.
• CR results are posted even if being contested.
• What are the standards in other regulatory agencies for posting performance results?
• Keep the public informed on who is preventing data from being timely and accurate.
  • Public scrutiny is the most effective means of behavior modification.
• Have one site instead of two, SAFER and SafeStat.

A3.3 Centralized Databases

• We need state and local data sharing because it is redundant to have both levels gathering the same information.
• Safety information, not financial information, should be generated by the database.
• There should be centralized data about insurance for carriers.
• There are 675,000 carriers and everyone knows who the top 100 carriers are, and those 100 have the resources to [self-]monitor. Others carriers do not have the resources available, so they rely on insurance companies for data assessment. A central database is needed!
• Possible central database:
  • Of inspection and crash reports entered into the FMCSA?s shared state system and shared major city system.
  • Of driver information: crashes, roadside inspection history, pass rate and why they did not pass, accident history by driver, tickets and Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) should be recorded.
  • Of Employee reference checks.
  • Of Drug and alcohol testing
  • Look at merging databases into one:
    • Commercial Driver?s License Information System (CDLIS), crash data, roadside inspections to assess the good guys and bad guys.
    • Some of this information is collected but not shared. Motor carriers cannot access all this data.
• Carriers should not manage the database, but the FMCSA would seem like big brother if they are in charge of the data collection and safeguarding.
  • So, have a 3rd party who is not associated with the FMCSA or shippers; confidentiality agreements would be needed.
• Database could be active 24-7.

National Registry of Drivers

• Need a better way to access driver information because Commercial Driver?s License Information System (CDLIS) information cannot be accessed.
  • A national registration of drivers.
  • Need a national database versus a national pointer system (CDLIS).
  • Data needs to be uniform, CDLIS data is not uniform.
• The FMCSA should consider using required electronic driver files. This could:
  • Reduce the amount of time inspectors spend sorting through paper files.
  • Allow for e-notification of inspection notices and violations.
  • [Allow the FMCSA to provide] education about when, how and what is available.
  • Be a value-added system to speed notification.
  • Assist with hazmat, security and hiring mandates.
  • Allow information will be real-time.
  • Make data storage requirements less for the carrier.
  • Data does not presently exist at the federal level.
  • Help a carrier have all the information it needs to make hiring decisions.
  • Help carriers re-focus staff in other areas.
  • Drivers would have the ability to track their hours-of-service data and insert themselves into the process. The database could electronically track information about drivers and inform what safety actions should be taken.
  • This could minimize occurrences of drivers jumping to new a company without disclosing drug record. (Some DMVs track information on those who tested positive in a drug test, but are not consistent across states.)
  • Allow federally-mandated CDL information on driver qualifications and driver eligibility to be maintained.
• Needs to include the following information, in a uniform manner:
  • Qualification file information
  • Drug and alcohol information, whether positive or negative
  • Positive information as well also, such as if the driver is 20 years accident free.
  • Discharge for cause
  • DOT recordable accidents
  • Physical and medical information
  • Suspensions and revocations
  • Hours-of-service
  • Felonies and other crimes
• Would need to enforce carrier use of this system

SafeStat

• The process for Out-Of-Service (OOS), Accident Safety Evaluation Area (SEA), Management System Score is broken and not sufficient for oversight
  • If a carrier is out-of-service four times in 30 months, the score doubles, regardless of the carrier?s number of trucks. There is no normalization based on size.
  • CRs look at the number of accidents from two sources, and whatever number is greater goes into SafeStat.
  • A good outcome through a hearing does not stop a carrier from getting ?punished? in SafeStat process.
• SafeStat score does not have a correlation [to safety]; more local law enforcement input is needed.
• SafeStat cannot tell what the carrier is doing since it?s just a snap shot.
• SafeStat numbers are spotty and inconsistent, good inspections are often not documented.
• SafeStat is good, but there are serious issues with the formula and incomplete data. There is room for improvement because of missing information and errors.
• This [SafeStat] process is not eliminating bad carriers or bad drivers. Bad drivers are able to move around to different companies since there is not sufficient information to track them. The information captured for a database should have a profile that says John Doe has been put out-of-service on several occasions.
• SafeStat should be organized by mileage instead of number of units.
• SafeStat methodology is excellent, data is not:
  • Data is not timely, accurate or reliable and it comes from different sources.
  • Data is bad and should not be used to target companies.
• SafeStat may be good, but the data quality problem is hindering the process.
  • There are local and state standardization issues.
  • SafeStat is too narrow of a snapshot and all the data does not relate directly to safety.
  • There is no process to update SafeStat once violations are resolved.
• SafeStat data is one sided.
  • Unfortunately, many decisions are made on inaccurate data.
  • SafeStat should allow for correction of data errors, for companies to comment on unfavorable ratings, and for carriers to enter their own response; ?I am challenging this and it is up for review.?
• SafeStat only monitors carriers if there is a violation and gives a satisfactory or unsatisfactory response, end of story, no big inquiries.
• [The FMCSA needs to] rework qualify, timeliness, and, proportionality, and algorithms of SafeStat. Current errors in database affect inspection rates
  • SafeStat relies on CR results, but, unfortunately, not enough carriers have had a CR.
  • More accidents occur east of the Mississippi River.
  • Geographical miles are not included and this affects peer groups.
  • Safety management is really only a picture of prior enforcement of CRs.
    • Should be called Enforcement Safety Evaluation Area (SEA)
• www.safersys.org, the Safety and Fitness Electronic Record (SAFER) website, gives highlights of roadside compliance and crash data.

A3.4 Ratings

• How about a safety manager rating system?
• Currently, safety ratings are affected by unimportant factors. For example, if a motor carrier is rear-ended and the driver is not at fault, that crash incident is still recorded in SafeStat [and hurts the carrier?s rating].

Effectiveness of Ratings

• CR safety ratings must trigger a deterrent effect. Currently this is not happening. An unsatisfactory rating should only be proposed for a 60-day period to allow carriers time to fix the problem.
• Carriers with conditional rating:
  • Currently the carrier has no incentive to improve the rating.
  • Instead, these carriers require follow-up within 6 months*. Then, if they have not addressed their issues within 1 year*, the carrier should be placed out-of-service. (*Timeframes require further evaluation dependent on whether the conditions are acute versus critical.)
• Currently, carriers may maintain no rating status without it hindering business.
• It would be easy for FMCSA to establish motor carrier or driver authority based on safety ratings. Licensing requirements should mandate an additional test, perhaps the test could be administered over the internet every 2 years to make sure drivers re-qualify. This way the motor carrier is not always burdened with training and updated changes. Motor carriers cannot address everything, and this would allow the regulated community to be proactive.
• However, the FMCSA should avoid [not bother] carriers who already have satisfactory ratings.

Publicity of Ratings

• The history of a rating should be visible.
  • If a carrier has an unsatisfactory rating and then improves, the progress should be shown.
• When the CR?s are completed, give a rating that is not public.
  • How about posting ratings on-line so that ratings would be communicated quickly
• If a carrier?s rating is ?unsatisfactory?, it is not known in a timely manner.
  • Can there be public notice?
• FMCSA should publish all six (6) CR scores so that interested parties can have a better understanding of the performance rating.

Rating Levels

• Current ratings have no distinction between outstanding and marginal compliance. ?Satisfactory? rating is too encompassing; there needs to be more levels of compliance.
  • [Some people are] disenchanted with safety rating system.
  • A single ?Satisfactory? rating level does not motivate carriers to further improve.
• FMCSA needs to increase choices in rating system, because end users need more information on bad and good companies.
• FMCSA needs to have a meaning full ratings process that is more tiered.
• Suggestions:
  • Add an excellent category to the rating system.
  • Change rating systems to a tiered scale to incorporate different satisfactory levels.
  • For example, a graded system of a scale from ?1 to 5? or ?A to F? would allow for degrees of distinction.
• Benefits of tiered ratings:
  • This would allow FMCSA to allocate resources better.
  • Provides a standard of excellence.
  • Would allow consumers to make informed decisions.
• Crash ratings should be based on preventable accidents rather than overall responsible accidents.
• Consider DOD ratings and its comprehensiveness.

Lifecycle of Ratings

• Today, ratings can last several years, regardless of whether the carrier is currently in compliance.
  • Why should a company with a score of 95 be able to operate for 5 years without another review? If safety is so important, then CRs need to be more frequent and not allowed to stand for 6 years.
  • Rating information needs to be current and available in a useful form. Non-current rating information is irrelevant
• Even if you have not had a CR in the few years, it is good still to get a SafeStat score.
  • There needs to be a specified timeframe for updating ratings, whether it is every 6 months or every year, etc.
• What about an expiration date on the CR score?
• What about everyone?s ratings being reviewed every 5 years?
• It would be useful to have a real-time adjustment of ratings. Ratings could be continuously updated based on new data from inspections and violations.

APPENDIX A4. STAKEHOLDER COMMENTS REGARDING SAFETY OPPORTUNITIES AND STRATEGIES

This chapter notes the comments provided by Listening Session participants around topics relating specifically to safety programs and strategies. The statements presented are inclusive of the substantive points made by participants on this set of topics. The goal of the compilers has been to preserve comments in their original form but, at the same time, eliminate redundancy.

A4.1 Attributes

• The attributes presented by FMCSA are good but requires a shift in the FMCSA?s organization.
• Attributes need to focus on behavior, consider influences and be stakeholder- focused.

Commentary on Attributes
Focus on Positive

• Reward those who are doing right thing. There is not sufficient ?congratulations? or reward for doing things right.
• There needs to be more positive interaction between the carriers, the FMCSA, and the driver
  • Give credit to good operations to stop the current assumption that carriers are guilty until proven innocent.

Openness, Communications, Clarity

• Open up ratings.
• Clarity is needed for the regulated industry. The FMCSA should provide resources so that carriers can do self-assessments.
• Assessment criteria need to be clear and understandable to all stakeholders.
• There needs to be clarity of ?partnership? ? create a program where FMCSA works with carriers.

Comprehensive Focus

• Allow all stakeholders, both public and private, to work together to achieve common goals.
• Be encompassing.
• Be viewed by both industry and regulatory groups.

Aligned with Industry

• Consider the market as an impetus.
• Programs need to have support of the carrier industry
• Programs need to be based on an understanding of the industry?s opportunities.
• Programs need to be adaptable, evolving and fluid with the changes occurring in the industry.

Collaborative, and hence more efficient

• ?Line up? with what others already have in place for safety.
  • Look at other states, other federal agencies, other DOT models, and mirror them in developing new regulations.
  • Collaborate with FAA and DOT to become more efficient.
  • Look to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), railroads, Federal Transit Authority (FTA), and American Trucking Association (ATA).
• Success depends on cooperation between entities and partnerships.
• Right now, there is both a lot of overlap and contradictions between government agencies. Need to especially avoid contractions and conflicts.
  • For example, the Department of Homeland Security has a contradictory focus to FMCSA on the performance history requirements and drug and alcohol requirements for leasing facilities and new drivers.
• Work closer with states and federal agencies to share information and achieve efficiency.
• Being a stronger partner with the insurance community could help achieve overall reduction in cost of risk.
• FMCSA should take its Ideas back to stakeholders for support before submitting it to Congress.

Promotes Growth

• Be motivational and flexible.
• Is dynamic (needs to be able to change in order to accommodate new issues).
• Be proactive.
• Be encouraging of new technologies.
• Provide regulatory relief.

Possible, Accessible

• There needs to be accessibility to resources and level in comfort in asking for resources.
• Programs should be easy-to-implement with all kinds of carriers.
• Programs should be:
  • Realistic and practical,
  • Sustainable and use a reasonable number resources.
  • Achievable, successful, and attainable.
  • Zero based: a regulation should not be implemented until it?s value is proven.
  • Credible and accepted.
• Relevant to the problem.
• There needs to be a balance between realities; financial versus theoretical.
• Programs need to be more incremental:
  • More categories in rating system. Like a credit score, ratings should tell you right where you are.
  • Overcome one-size fits all.

Cost effective, Affordable, Appropriate Risk

• Spend money where it will yield the most value.
• Does someone have to physically on-site at a carrier for several days? Expedite the off-site so it only lasts half-a-day.
• Risk should be assessed from a business value standpoint:
  • Do not look to the government to judge risk.
  • Look to insurance because their risk assessment is based on economics.
• However, government should look at risk in particular situations, such as hazardous materials situations such as Yuca Mountain.

Performance-Based

• Identify and target carriers with poor performance.
• Create incentives for carriers demonstrating the ability to manage the outcomes themselves to an exceptional level. Demonstration of that ability includes:
  • Using valid/accurate and timely information.
  • Being results-oriented.
  • Using benchmarking measures.
  • Using measures, especially those that are performance-based versus prescriptive.
  • Targeting root causes.
  • Being accountable.

More Structure, Uniformity, Consistency

• Eliminate subjectivity as much as possible and reduce interpretation.
• Where is consistency needed?
  • Across states and localities.
  • State and federal governments should be more consistent.
  • Right now there is much subjectivity among states.
• What is the problem?
  • Lack of consistency makes it difficult to determine how to handle interpretations.
• What needs to be consistent?
  • There should also be consistency in definitions. For example, what one entity may think of ?flexibility?, another may not.
  • Standards and consistency of training are needed.
• What are barriers?
  • Uniformity isn?t guaranteed until you have solid audit routines and performance measures.
  • Profiling, legality it is questionable, but there is some validity to profiling.

Fair and Equitable

• Drivers who serve churches and senior centers are not regulated under equitable means as other commercial drivers.
• Freight and passenger carriers are unique, and need to be treated differently. The FMCSA makes a mistake with cookie cutter compliance reviews and inspections.
• Regulations should include industries whose core business is related to trucking, such as large retailers.
• The FMCSA can grandfather situations to make it fair for different types of carriers and drivers.
• Interstate and intrastate carriers should be handled equally. A single set of rules should apply

Proportionality

• ?One size does not fit all.? Right now programs are ?one size fits all?, such that it ends up being ?one size fits no one.? Programs need to be considerate of:
  • Size of operations.
  • Number of complaints and size.
  • Area of operations.
  • However, there can be basic, core principles that fit everyone.
• There are different needs for large versus small carriers.

Simplicity, Plain English, Understandable

• Apply the ?keep it simple? rule to all rules and regulations. Write them in plain English.
• Have more straightforward language in regulations
• Have consistent description of everything across the board.
• Have a consistent the meaning behind SafeStat score.
• Make programs ?easy to use? for the carrier in the CR process, records for review. For example, have a checklist for carriers. Because there is so much information, the FMCSA needs to make it simpler.
• A CR program that uses web access could prevent getting a fair cross-section because some smaller carriers might not have web-access.
• Minimize repetition ? a carrier shouldn?t need six interruption letters to understand its problem. Simplify -- enforcement should come sooner.

Attribute Conflicts

• Flexibility and efficiency are conflicting attributes. Often a flexible program is not efficient.
• The idea of voluntary participation conflicts with idea of regulation and enforcement.

A4.2 Best Practices

• The following safety management practices could help:
  • A credit system
  • A service hours approach
  • The ability to periodically check on data
• FMCSA should try to obtain some trial money to fund the research of best practices by using safety and statistical data to make case.
• Question: what are best practices versus regulatory practices?

Specific Programs

• Michigan?s driver training is well received, and lowers insurance rate.
• OSHA allows people to file complaints and ask compliance questions via the phone or fax.
• The FMCSA should consider adopting and modifying the DOD contract that requires companies to pass a prescreening survey to see if they need to do a safety assessment. If a carrier cannot pass, that means they are not compliant from the get-go.
• Furthermore, DOD does not just look at minimal compliance; they also look at a company?s safety program to equal a complete profile.
  • Provides incentive
  • Introduce elements of profit incentive.
• The FMCSA should look at what triggers a review; OSHA may be a good spot to start.
• The FAA has a good program to model after regarding the frequency of reviews.
• The FMCSA should use radioactive guidelines as scenarios and ?best practices? to follow.
• FMCSA should look into the California ?Pull Notice? program:
  • Whenever activity happens on a license, notices are sent.

Technology

• Research untested technologies such as electronic onboard recorders, lane deviation techniques, and collision warning systems.
  • Disadvantages to this approach are liability and exception regiment.
  • The federal government should provide incentives for carriers to test new technologies.
• FMCSA needs to embrace technology; otherwise, it will not be able to increase its influence. If the FMCSA wants to do more with less, then they need to embrace technology. But you cannot throw the switch tomorrow and hope the whole industry gets involved.
• The federal government has already invested in technology for items such as ITS and homeland security. It needs to leverage its own investments and adapt the use of these technologies for other purposes and use those additional dollars to help this process.
• If FMCSA used advanced technology systems for items such as truckers? hours-of-service; compliance reviews could be faster.

Technology Needs to be User-Friendly

• Make technology and software user-friendly. In addition, technologies should not have too many disclaimers.
• System needs to be simplified in way data is displayed.
• Help by getting technology into smaller companies.

• Perhaps use ?transportation cards? that all industry stakeholders carry with them containing important data such as; employment history, medical history, and identification.
• Have tools to allow law enforcement to track hours of driving.
• Technology doesn?t discriminate based on size ? both small mom-and-pop carriers or big carriers can manage data through web.
• Technology could help speed up the CR process. For example, carriers could transfer information electronically.
• The FMCSA could become an advocate for on-board technology as a way to understand and manage driver behavior. As opposed to compliance and technologies that manage safety based on results from the past year ? on-board technology uses real-time info.

A4.3 Strategies for Change

• Establish a grid system that could allow clarity around both accident records and roadside ratings.
• Adjust driving tests: Maybe regulations and safety statistics should be on driving tests.
  • For example, what are typical accident patters or types of accidents in reference to loads. If I know the statistics about the way a truck hauling concrete has accidents and understand what is considered dangerous, I would be a safer driver.

Encourage Culture of Safety

• The FMCSA should encourage states to do more criminal prosecution when carriers do not comply with CRs.
• In an ideal world, there should be stricter out-of-service regulations and drivers getting civil penalties.
  • The obstacles are states and local rights.
• Carriers want less regulation.
• Allow a carrier to invite in the FMCSA to benefit from expertise.
  • Instead of carrying intimidation, FMCSA should carry techniques to encourage better behavior. This would combine education with enforcement.
  • FMCSA should assess their auditors by amount of corrective measures they suggest as well as enforcement measures.
• There should be more accountability to the driver to follow regulations, such as hours-of-service.

Self-disclosure, Police Yourself

• Publish a tool or a format so carriers could post their own CRs.
• How about a process to submit data yourself?
  • Better yet, make it an incentive and give tax credits to those who do it.
• Perhaps create a self-audit process similar to completing your tax returns with increased penalties.
  • In addition, the ?returns? could be submitted via the web.
• Drivers could help identify companies who are changing DOT numbers.

Encourage Innovation

• An implementation of Web-based systems would allow audits at regional offices instead of on-site.
  • This would also help to streamline audits for carriers with a good performance rating. FMCSA could easily look at the materials online, and renew the carrier?s rating if everything looks OK.
  • Audits should hold everyone in the chain accountable:
    • DOT should first go to the ownership list, starting at the state level, then day-to-day management, then to the driver.
    • There should be a trickle down message.
• Can the FMCSA have any influence on putting testing equipment in vehicles and, as a result, allow carriers to see a decrease in insurance rates?
  • Currently, if carriers place equipment vehicles, no return is seen to the owner.
• Synthesize different review processes that do the same thing:
  • For example, let?s look at school buses in Georgia, which transport 2,000 school kids a day: DOD and CVSA conduct road reviews four times a year. In addition, the county school boards also have their risk inspectors perform reviews. This redundancy could be eliminated.
  • Federal, state and local governments should set goals that are attainable and complimentary to those of other agencies.

Embrace a Total Quality Model

• If we embrace a quality model, we should need fewer inspectors.
  • For example, if we have information on hotspots where accidents are occurring, we could focus inspections on specific areas. Certain information helps look at root causes.

Data Could Pull Entities Together

• To meet increasing challenges (legal demands, training drivers and providing oversight), companies need data quickly; they cannot wait on the FMCSA.
• Unifying the efforts of 50 states would improve timeliness of data ? record keeping could be more successful if they were consolidated and streamlined.
• Regulatory relief could be provided through the development of a national database because it would be a one stop shop for all regulatory needs.

Do Core Work Well; Then Add on Programs

• FMCSA needs to focus on the current process, so it will work well before we add on to it:
  • Currently, there are many carriers and resources are limited. The addition of potentially reviewing Mexican carriers adds an additional burden when the process cannot even monitor domestic carriers.
• An expansion of the FMCSA programs should not include additional regulation. The FMCSA should tweak existing regulations and enforce those rules, instead of adding more rules.

Legislation That Would Help

• Legislation is needed to require SafeStat for intrastate carriers.
• A rational prioritization selection system, which is derived from a new statutory scheme for safety rating carriers, is needed.
• There is an increasing legislative burden on industry from federal, state and local legislation requirements.

Quick Hits, Important Gestures

• Conduct a mock CR for carriers.
• Endorse truck championships.
• Check out the inspection area.
• Conduct carrier closing interview.
• Limit CDL renewal to 2-3 years.