Riky Von Honaker
As a follow up to last month’s article by Michael Nischan on FMCSA’s approved SMS changes, I am providing an assessment of the impact I believe these changes will have. These changes have the potential to significantly impact your scores, both positively and negatively.
I have categorized these changes into three groups: positive, neutral, and negative, based on my assessment. My opinions will primarily focus on the potential impact of these changes on lawsuits, broker interactions, and insurance premiums.
It’s crucial to remember that the CSA/SMS system’s primary objective is to identify carriers that require increased oversight, not to serve as the sole determinant of a carrier’s safety fitness by the FMCSA. Regardless of my opinion on each change, everyone in the industry should have a basic understanding of how this new system will function.
Positive Changes
- Violation grouping – As an example, during a roadside inspection you receive two violations “393.9T and 393.9TS” on your trailer. Because the turn signal is out on the trailer that violation would be marked “Out of Service.” Under the current scoring system both violations would be scored. However, under the new scoring system, as both violations are in the same group, “Lighting – Driver Observed”, only one violation would be scored. In this case the turn signal, as it is the more severe. I feel this will normalize some of the variances between inspections.
- Transferring all “Operating While Out of Service” violations to the “Unsafe Driving” Basic. This makes sense, as it is more of an Unsafe Driving issue rather than a Vehicle Maintenance, Hours of Service, or Driver Fitness violation when drivers continue to operate the vehicle after being placed out of service by an officer or operating while ill, fatigued or impaired.
- Splitting the Vehicle Maintenance Basic. Vehicle Maintenance violations will now be categorized by whether the FMCSA determined the driver should have observed the violation. There will be a new Basic labelled “Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed”. Currently there are 219 violations, of the 1,077 available, that would not qualify as driver observed, and those would remain in the Vehicle Maintenance Basic. While I think this is positive, I am curious as to how the determination is made. There are many violations not included in the driver observed category, that – as a former driver – I feel a driver should notice during a typical pre-trip inspection.
Negative Changes
- All violations having the same point value. The proposed system assigns 1 point to all violations, except for CDL Disqualifying violations or violations resulting in an out-of-service order, which are assigned 2 points.I strongly disagree with this approach. The current point values reflect the severity of the violation. For instance, a false log violation or driving beyond permitted hours of service should carry a higher weight than minor infractions like failing to update the trailer number or sign the log.
Under the new system, these violations would be treated equally if they didn’t lead to an out-of-service order. This is particularly problematic given recent CVSA OOS criteria changes. False logs and hour-of-service violations may no longer result in an out-of-service order under certain conditions, even when they pose significant safety risks.
- Proportionate Percentiles. Safety Event Groups have always been an issue when a carrier is near the top or bottom of that group. For example, if you have a measure of .50 for Hours of Service with 100 driver inspections, your Basic would be at 50% — well under the 65% threshold. However, if you have the same measure with 101 driver inspections, your Basic would jump to 74%. This would also increase your ISS score from 46 optional to 86 inspect. The new system states it would correct this issue by using “benchmark medians.” If it normalizes the jumps, I am behind this 100%.
- Removal From Percentage Calculation. Carriers that have not had a violation in the last 12 months would not be used in the calculation of percentiles.
There are some other changes that would only affect certain carriers. The current maximum average miles per vehicle to allow for a utilization factor is 200,000 miles per vehicle, which would increase to 250,000 miles per vehicle.
