Why is CSA Needed
Since the 1970s, Federal and State enforcement agencies in partnership with many
other stakeholders have progressively reduced the rate of commercial motor vehicle
crashes resulting in injuries or fatalities on our Nation’s highways.
The rate of crash reduction slowed, prompting the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
(FMCSA) to take a fresh look at how the agency evaluates the safety of motor carriers
and drivers and to explore ways to improve its safety monitoring, evaluation, and
intervention processes. Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) is the result of
this comprehensive examination.
Limitations of the former Operational Model
FMCSA’s compliance and safety programs improve and promote safety performance and
save lives. However, agency resources available for these efforts have remained
relatively constant over time, despite increases in the regulated population and
additional programmatic responsibilities. Given these constraints, FMCSA has identified
limitations in both how safety is measured and how unsafe behaviors, once identified,
are corrected.
- FMCSA’s former compliance review (CR) program was resource-intensive and reached
only a small percentage of motor carriers, which made it increasingly difficult
to continue to improve motor carrier safety using existing tools.
- Onsite CRs to determine a motor carrier’s safety fitness required an average of
three to four days to complete. At program staffing levels, FMCSA could perform
CRs on only a small number of the 700,000 active interstate motor carriers.
- SafeStat was FMCSA’s former system for measuring safety performance. Though it proved
effective, SafeStat grouped safety problems together to identify carriers for a
one-size-fits-all CR. Moreover, it did not focus on the behaviors known to cause
crashes.
- The
FMCSA Large Truck Crash Causation Study
indicated that increased attention should be given to drivers of commercial motor
vehicles.
CSA builds on FMCSA’s former processes for assessing and improving the safety performance
of motor carriers and drivers through the new Safety Measurement System and a new
suite of tools. These include an enhanced CR, in addition to more focused and efficient
interventions tailored to address specific problems.