A Trojan Horse

A further examination of the NPRM for the agency’s Safety Fitness Determination suggests the surprise rulemaking may be a Trojan horse.  The idea that rehashed SMS methodology will be used to find approximately 300 carriers per year unfit based on roadside inspections appears to be a concession to the critics of SMS methodology, only penalizing the “worst of the worst.” Similarly, the agency’s rulemaking says that it has heard from SMS critics and in unexplained ways addressed concerns about peer group anomalies enforcement inconsistencies.

Warmed over SMS

For over a decade, the FMCSA has tried to develop a system to rate carriers based on roadside performance alone – depriving carriers of an audit and due process.

SafeStat, which had percentile rankings in 3 safety event groups or BASICs, was a bust.  So the agency created 7 BASICs, arbitrarily constructed peer groups, and started feeding the system with highly granulated, non out-of-service violations to increase the data count.