Page 16 - ATR 2 2015 web

News iN Brief, the safety of trucks and buses. makes carrier crash data publicly avail-
Continued from page 14 Dave Osiecki, executive vice presi- able without specifying who is at fault
dent and chief of national advocacy at in a crash.
The legislation, HR1371, would the American Trucking Associations “FMCSA’s failure to address this real
temporarily halt the publication of what said the ATA greatly appreciated flaw is especially egregious in light of its
Barletta called flawed safety scores Barletta’s efforts to improve CSA, and push to make CSA scores easier for the
until the Federal Motor Carrier Safety remove CSA scores from public view public to access and its encouragement
Administration’s Compliance Safety until the much-needed improvements that the public make decisions based on
Accountability (CSA) scoring system is are made. what they know to be faulty informa-
revamped. tion,” ATA President Bill Graves said.
The Barletta legislation requires While everyone throughout
FMCSA to stop publishing safety the industry and even the enforce-
scores until the CSA program is ment community seem to agree the
fixed. Additionally, it prevents these CSA scoring mechanism is flawed,
scores from being used as evidence in some have stopped shy of asking for
liability cases. In the meantime, the the scores to be taken down. The
bill requires the National Academy Arkansas Trucking Association Board
of Public Administration (NAPA) of Directors recently voted to keep the
— an independent, nonprofit and information public to while improve-
non-partisan organization chartered ments are sought. Board members
by Congress — to work with FMCSA The American Trucking contended that having the information
to develop a safety score improvement Associations leaders have also urged public causes companies and drivers to
plan and implement that improvement FMCSA to change the CSA’s safety mea- be more safety conscious and that tak-
plan. Once the scores are improved, surement system so that crashes are ing the scores down might decrease the
they will again be available for the pub- not posted on the list of carriers on the urgency of the desired fix.
lic to make educated decisions about agency’s website. The current procedure

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16 aRkansas TRuCking RepoRT | issue 2 2015