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Georgia is one of four states--the others being Colorado, Missouri, and New Jersey--participating in the pilot operational model testing of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)'s new safety program, called Comprehensive Safety Analysis (CSA) 2010. The goal of CSA 2010 is to develop a new method for evaluating the safety of individual trucking companies that will enable the FMCSA to evaluate the safety practices of more individual carriers and hopefully reduce the likelihood of deadly trucking accidents on Georgia highways. In reviewing the data from its Large Truck Crash Causation Study, published in 2006, the FMCSA realized that it was putting too many resources into individual compliance reviews while ignoring one of the most important factors in large truck crashes: dangerous, distracted, and fatigued truckers. By incorporating a review of truckers into its streamlined compliance reviews, the FMCSA hopes to dramatically reduce dangerous trucking accidents nationwide when the program is fully implemented in 2010. The FMCSA says its new operational model represents a number of improvements over the old model because it is: • Flexible because it is designed to change as new technology becomes available
• Efficient because it maximizes the resources of the FMCSA to improve the safety performance of trucking companies
• Effective because it improves the quality of contact with trucking companies and identifies behaviors associated with poor safety
• Innovative because it uses technology to improve the timeliness and accuracy of data used to determine safety fitness
• Equitable because it attempts to "ensure consistent treatment of similarly situated members of the motor carrier community." If it accomplishes these five goals, then the CSA 2010 initiative will indeed prove a welcome addition to the FMCSA's at times lax enforcement of regulations. However, it is the last point that leads to some concern. What does it mean by "similarly situated members of the motor carrier community," and why should consistency be tiered only within particular groups. Shouldn't every truck and truck driver on the road be held to the same standard of safety, whether the company has one truck and one driver, or one hundred? After all if there is a truck-auto accident, the consequences of the accident do not depend on the situation of the member of the motor carrier. The FMCSA website does not clarify what this particular definition of equitability means. One would like to hope that this new initiative will increase the safety of trucks on the road, however, it is important to treat such initiatives with caution. Remember that the current FMCSA has instituted what the Supreme Court has determined are illegal Hours of Service (HoS) rules designed to allow truckers to spend more hours on the road, and re-instituted the same rules several times over the objections of public service groups and rulings by the Court. If you would like more information about the implementation of CSA 2010, you can contact the FMCSA or the Georgia Department of Public Safety. If you have been hurt in a truck accident, contact an Atlanta, Georgia truck accident lawyer at Robbins & Associates, P.C. today for a free consultation.
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