Crash Preventability Determination Program to expand, FMCSA says

The FMCSA is restarting and expanding its Crash Preventability Determination Program, the agency announced on Friday, May 1.

As part of the expansion, FMCSA is including new eligible crash types to the program.

The crash types now eligible for review include rear collisions, wrong direction or illegal turns, parked or legally stopped, failure of the other vehicle to stop, under the influence, medical issues, falling asleep or distracted driving, cargo or equipment debris or infrastructure, animal strike, suicide, and rare or unusual types of crashes.

Under the program, commercial motor vehicle drivers with an eligible crash that occurred on or after Aug. 1, 2019, can submit a Request for Data Review with the required police accident report and other supporting documents, photos, or videos through the agency’s DataQs website.

Background

In July 2017, FMCSA announced a program to evaluate the preventability of eight categories of crashes through submissions of Requests for Data Review to its national data correction system known as DataQs. In August 2019, FMCSA announced a streamlined process.

In October 2019, OOIDA told FMCSA in formal comments that crashes deemed “not preventable” should not be counted against truck drivers or motor carriers.

The Association supported FMCSA’s proposal, saying that nonpreventable crashes have unnecessarily discredited safety ratings of drivers and motor carriers “for far too long.”

FMCSA said it listened to the public’s feedback.

“Based on comments received in response to the August 2019 proposal, FMCSA established the Crash Preventability Determination Program, which will expand the types of eligible crashes, modify the Safety Measurement System to exclude crashes with not preventable determinations from prioritization algorithm and note the not preventable determinations in the pre-employment screening program,” the agency wrote.

More information about the program can be found here.