Enhanced Carrier Safety Measurement System (SMS)

[Notices] [FR Doc No: 2024-27087] DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration [Docket No. FMCSA-2022-0066] Enhanced Carrier Safety Measurement System (SMS) AGENCY: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). ACTION: Notice; response to public comments. SUMMARY: FMCSA announces enhancements to the Safety Measurement System (SMS) used to identify motor carriers for safety interventions and addresses comments received in response to FMCSA's Federal Register notice titled, ``Revised Carrier Safety Measurement System (SMS).'' These enhancements build on the Agency's efforts to continually improve SMS, which it first implemented in 2010. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Wesley Russell, Compliance Division, FMCSA, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, (615) 620-9377, [email] . If you have questions regarding viewing or submitting material to the docket, contact Dockets Operations, (202) 366-9826. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Background In December 2010, FMCSA implemented SMS to identify high risk motor carriers for investigations (75 FR 18256, Apr. 9, 2010). Section 5305(a) of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (Pub. L. 114-94; 129 Stat. 1312; Dec. 4, 2015) requires FMCSA to ensure, at a minimum, that a review is conducted on motor carriers that demonstrate, through performance data, that they are among the highest risk carriers for 4 consecutive months. FMCSA and its State enforcement partners also use SMS to identify and prioritize motor carriers for inspections and less resource-intensive interventions, such as automated warning letters. SMS also provides motor carriers and other stakeholders with safety performance data, which is updated monthly, through the public website at https://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS . Under section 5223 of the FAST Act, FMCSA removed SMS percentiles and alerts from the public SMS website for motor carriers transporting property. Passenger carrier percentiles and alerts remain publicly available, as well as inspection, investigation, crash, and registration data for all carriers. On February 15, 2023, FMCSA proposed the following changes to its SMS and announced a 90-day preview and comment period for stakeholders (88 FR 9954): 1. Reorganized and Updated Safety Categories (Now ``Compliance Categories''), Including New Segmentation; 2. Consolidated Violations; 3. Simplified Violation Severity Weights; 4. Proportionate Percentiles Instead of Safety Event Groups; 5. Improved Intervention Thresholds; 6. Greater Focus on Recent Violations; and 7. Updated Utilization Factor. During the 90-day preview and comment period, motor carriers could log in to the Prioritization Preview \1\ to see what their own prioritization results would be under the proposed SMS methodology. The public was able to view what a logged-in carrier would see using example data. In addition, FMCSA held three question-and-answer sessions in March 2023 for the industry and the public, where participants were able to ask questions about the proposed changes and receive real-time responses. The comment period ended on May 16, 2023. Following the comment period, the Agency has continued to make the Prioritization Preview site available to industry and other safety stakeholders, so they have ample time to review and understand the impacts of the enhancements. \1\ Available at https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/prioritizationpreview/ . II. Summary of Public Comments and Response FMCSA received 176 comments in response to the February 2023, notice. Of these, 111 submissions contained comments specific to the changes proposed in that notice; 65 submissions contained comments that were not relevant to the notice. The commenters included motor carriers, drivers/owner-operators, industry associations, and safety advocates. The following entities submitted relevant comments: Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (Advocates), American Bus Association (ABA), American Trucking Associations, Inc. (ATA), Chamber of Commerce and Industry, et al. (Arizona Organizations), Arizona Trucking Association, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), Downeast Shipping LLC, Driver iQ, Drivewyze Ltd (Drivewyze), FedEx Corporation (FedEx), Greyhound Lines, Inc. (Greyhound), Independent Carrier Safety Association (ICSA), International Foodservice Distributors Association (IFDA), Motor Carrier Insurance Education Foundation (MCIEF), Minnesota Trucking Association (MTA), National School Transportation Association (NSTA), National Tank Truck Carriers, Inc. (NTTC), Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), Roehl Transport, Inc., SambaSafety, Schneider National, Inc. (Schneider), Shippers Preferred Express, Tour Up, Truck Safety Coalition (TSC), Veolia North America (Veolia), Yellow Corporation, Zoom Transportation Inc., Adrienne Anderson, Kellie Case, Dmitri Kachan, Adam Loutsch, Brian Loysen, Kathleen Ravin, Elizabeth St. Clare, Riky Von Honaker, and individuals who did not identify their organizations. Many stakeholders provided comments on multiple proposed changes and topics. Comments outside the scope of the February 2023 notice are not discussed in this notice. Most of the comments on the February 2023, notice voiced support for the proposed changes. Some comments voiced concerns that this notice will address. The proposals for reorganized safety categories, consolidated violations, simplified violation severity weights, and greater focus on recent violations generated the most comments. In addition, many commenters suggested alternative approaches to a proposed change or requested that FMCSA provide further analysis or solicit additional input. The following sections provide a summary of the comments received and the Agency's responses for each proposed change. 1. Reorganized and Updated Safety Categories (Now ``Compliance Categories''), Including New Segmentation A. Changing ``BASICs'' to ``Safety Categories'' (Now ``Compliance Categories'') The vast majority of commenters did not address the proposal to replace the term Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs, with ``safety categories.'' Three commenters (ATA, ABA, and Driver iQ) agreed with the proposal to replace ``BASICs'' with another term but suggested alternative terminology to ``safety categories.'' ATA suggested using ``compliance categories,'' rather than ``safety categories,'' commenting that ``[r]eferring to the BASICs as `Compliance Categories' simplifies the terminology to a more understandable and relatable reference. It also will allow motor carrier operations and the enforcement community to more accurately pinpoint and address compliance concerns.'' ABA supported ATA's view, suggesting that `` `compliance categories' . . . more accurately depicts the information categorized.'' Driver iQ also echoed ATA's comments. Two of the four commenters (MCIEF and Riky Von Honaker) that addressed this proposal did not agree with it. MCIEF requested that FMCSA continue to use BASICs as it emphasizes the purpose of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program to analyze safety behavior, identify issues, and help carriers improve with the goal of preventing crashes. Riky Von Honaker expressed concerns that the new terminology could be used against carriers in litigation. FMCSA Response FMCSA acknowledges ATA, ABA, and Driver iQ's suggestion to replace ``BASICs'' with ``compliance categories'' instead of ``safety categories.'' FMCSA's analysis has demonstrated a strong relationship between each ``BASIC'' or category and safety; under the enhanced methodology, the group of carriers prioritized in any category has a crash rate of 7.77 crashes per 100 power units (PUs), which is 10 percent higher than the current methodology--and higher than the national crash rate for the same time period of 5.00 crashes per 100 PUs.\2\ However, FMCSA acknowledges the public comments and has decided to move forward with ``compliance categories'' instead of ``safety categories'' as this will provide simpler and more relatable terminology. \2\ Available in table 23 of the Prioritization Foundational Document https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/Documents/New_Methodology_for_Prioritization_Foundational_Document_112222_508.pdf . B. Reorganized Safety Categories (Now ``Compliance Categories''): Unsafe Driving and Vehicle Maintenance i. Unsafe Driving Four commenters (ABA, ATA, MTA, and Adrienne Anderson) expressed support for the new Unsafe Driving Compliance Category, which incorporates: (1) Controlled Substances/Alcohol (CS/A) violations and (2) all Operating while Out-of-Service (OOS) violations. ATA stated that moving CS/A violations is ``logical,'' as drug and alcohol impaired driving is a form of unsafe driving, and that grouping all Operating while OOS violations under Unsafe Driving will help ``enforcement personnel more easily identify motor carriers who have violated OOS orders.'' ABA noted that these changes ``better reflect compliance realities and connections to actual safety risks.'' Three commenters (Advocates, NTTC, and an anonymous commenter) did not agree with moving CS/A violations to Unsafe Driving. Advocates and NTTC expressed the concern that this change may dilute the severity of CS/A violations and make it harder to identify carriers that employ drivers engaged in unsafe behaviors related to the use of controlled substances and alcohol. Advocates also pointed out that ``aside from increasing the number of carriers prioritized, [this change] appears to have little impact on the population of prioritized carriers from the aspects of crash rate and violation rate.'' An anonymous commenter also concurred that CS/A violations should remain separate from Unsafe Driving without further explanation. Tour Up did ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 46k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━