Trucking groups speak out against provision that would make CSA scores public

Several trucking groups, including the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, are speaking out against a provision in an appropriations bill that makes certain CSA information available to the public.

Letters signed by OOIDA, the Transportation Intermediaries Association and the American Trucking Associations were sent on Aug. 20 to the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging them “to reject this dangerous and misguided policy rider.”

Section 134 of the House-passed fiscal year 2020 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development funding bill states:

“Notwithstanding any restriction under part II of subtitle B of title V of the FAST Act, not later than 18 months after enactment of this Act, the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration shall make available on a public website information regarding analysis of violations developed under the agency’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, consistent with the data that the agency made publicly available immediately before Dec. 4, 2015.”

In June, FMCSA Administrator Ray Martinez told a Senate committee that CSA scores shouldn’t be made public until several areas of concern are addressed.

In 2017, the National Academy of Sciences completed a congressionally mandated study of the safety measurement system and included several recommendations to improve the analysis and data.

“This dangerous policy rider would be a step backward for safety, rolling back the important legislative reforms in the FAST Act to repair the flawed CSA scoring system – a system that both the Government Accountability Office and the National Academy of Sciences found to be unsound, using incomplete and unreliable data to develop motor carrier safety scores,” the trucking groups’ letter stated. “The FAST Act directed a full diagnostics and reboot of the CSA system, yet, this provision would disregard that legislative directive, as well as the ongoing work at the Department of Transportation to improve CSA, instead returning CSA to a system of inaccurate scores.”