Proposal for Future Enhancements to the Safety Measurement System (SMS)

Proposal for Future Enhancements to the Safety Measurement System (SMS)

Proposal for Future Enhancements to the Safety Measurement System (SMS)

T.F. Scott Darling, III
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
June 29, 2015

[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 124 (Monday, June 29, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 37037-37039]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-15907]

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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

[Docket No FMCSA-2015-0149]

Proposal for Future Enhancements to the Safety Measurement System
(SMS)

AGENCY: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), DOT.

ACTION: Notice; request for public comment.

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SUMMARY: FMCSA provides notice and seeks comments on proposed
enhancements to the Agency's Safety Measurement System (SMS)
methodology. Consistent with its prior announcements, the Agency is
proposing changes to the SMS that are the direct result of feedback
from stakeholders and the Agency's ongoing continuous improvement
efforts. The Agency is considering several changes in this notice and
is asking for comment on these issues, and other possible areas for
consideration. This set of enhancements would include changing some of
the SMS Intervention Thresholds to better reflect the Behavior Analysis
and Safety Improvement Categories' (BASICs) correlation to crash risk,
other changes to the Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance BASIC,
reclassifying violations for operating while out-of-service (OOS) to
the Unsafe Driving BASIC, and adjustments to the Utilization Factor
(UF). FMCSA will provide a preview of the proposed enhancements
allowing motor carriers to see their own data, enforcement to see the
data, and an opportunity for all to comment prior to implementation.

DATES: Comments must be received on or before July 29, 2015.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments bearing the Federal Docket
Management System (FDMS) Docket ID FMCSA-2015-0149 using any of the
following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to www.regulations.gov.
Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments.
Mail: Docket Management Facility; U.S. Department of
Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE., West Building Ground Floor,
Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001.
Hand Delivery or Courier: West Building Ground Floor, Room
W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE., Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and
5 p.m., ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal Holidays.
Fax: 1-202-493-2251.
Each submission must include the Agency name and the docket number
for this notice. Note that DOT posts all comments received without
change to www.regulations.gov, including any personal information
included in a comment. Please see the Privacy Act heading below.
Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or
comments, go to www.regulations.gov at any time or visit Room W12-140
on the ground level of the West Building, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE.,
Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., ET, Monday through Friday,
except Federal holidays. The on-line FDMS is available 24 hours each
day, 365 days each year. If you want acknowledgment that we received
your comments, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope or
postcard or print the acknowledgement page that appears after
submitting comments on-line.
Privacy Act: In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits
comments from the public to better inform its rulemaking process. DOT
posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information
the commenter provides, to www.regulations.gov, as described in the
system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at
www.dot.gov/privacy.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For information concerning this
notice, contact Mr. David Yessen, Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, Compliance Division, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE.,
Washington, DC 20590, Telephone 609-275-2606, E-Mail:
david.yessen@dot.gov. If you have questions on viewing or submitting
material to the docket, contact Docket Services, telephone (202) 366-
9826.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Background

The SMS

FMCSA first announced the implementation of the SMS in the Federal
Register on April 9, 2010 (75 FR 18256) (Docket No. FMCSA-2004-18898).
Since December 2010, FMCSA and its State partners have used SMS to
identify and prioritize motor carriers for interventions, including
automated warning letters and investigations. Additionally, SMS serves
as a principal factor in roadside inspection selection software
designed to recommend motor carriers for inspections. The SMS also
provides the motor carrier industry, consumers, and other safety
stakeholders with comprehensive safety performance data for many
carriers. This information is updated monthly. SMS is available at the
public Web site at http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS. FMCSA announced
improvements to the SMS in March 2012 (77 FR 18298) (Docket No. FMCSA-
2012-0074), August 2012 (77 FR 52110) (Docket No. FMCSA-2004-18898),
and July 2014 (79 FR 43117) (Docket No. FMCSA-2013-0392). As stated in
the March 2012 notice, FMCSA plans to apply a systematic approach to
making improvements to SMS, prioritizing, and releasing packages of
improvements as needed.
FMCSA convened a Continuous Improvement Working Group (CIWG)
comprised of Federal and State Enforcement personnel. This group used
their diverse experiences to identify areas of needed improvement with
SMS and the Compliance, Safety, Accountability interventions process.
The CIWG recommendations are under review, and they informed the
potential enhancements outlined below.

List of Proposed Enhancements

FMCSA is proposing the following enhancements:

[[Page 37038]]

1. Changing some of the SMS Intervention Thresholds to better
reflect the BASICs' correlation to crash risk.
2. Two changes to the HM Compliance BASIC:
Segmenting the HM Compliance BASIC by cargo tank (CT) and
non-CT carriers; and
Releasing motor carrier percentile rankngs under the HM
Compliance BASIC to the public.
3. Reclassifying violations for operating while OOS as under the
Unsafe Driving BASIC, rather than the BASIC of the underlying OOS
violation.
4. Increasing the maximum Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) used in the
UF to more accurately reflect operations of high-utilization carriers.

Proposed Changes to SMS Intervention Thresholds

The Agency published its most recent SMS Effectiveness Test at
http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/Documents/CSMS_Effectiveness_Test_Final_Report.pdf. After considering the results
of this test and other independent analyses, FMCSA is proposing to make
changes to more closely align intervention thresholds with each BASIC's
correlation to crash risk. FMCSA determined that lowering the Vehicle
Maintenance BASIC intervention threshold to better reflect the
seriousness of the crash risk associated with vehicle maintenance
issues and raising the intervention thresholds for the Controlled
Substances/Alcohol, HM Compliance, and Driver Fitness BASICs would more
effectively prioritize motor carriers.
As part of the SMS Effectiveness Test analysis, FMCSA analyzed the
correlation of each BASIC with crash risk and introduced three levels
of crash risk correlation:

High: Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, Hours-of-Service (HOS)
Compliance
Medium: Vehicle Maintenance
Low: Controlled Substances/Alcohol, HM Compliance, and Driver
Fitness

The following chart illustrates the crash rates by BASIC, as
demonstrated in the SMS Effectiveness Test.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
% Increase in crash
Crash rate (per 100 rate compared to
BASIC over threshold PUs) national average
(3.43)
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Unsafe Driving................ 6.62 93
Crash Indicator............... 6.34 85
HOS Compliance................ 6.26 83
Vehicle Maintenance........... 5.65 65
Controlled Substances/Alcohol. 4.61 34
HM Compliance................. 4.49 31
Driver Fitness................ 3.11 -9
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After a thorough analysis of this information and other available
studies, the Agency analyzed carriers over a variety of intervention
thresholds, and compared those crash rates to the national average.
Based on that analysis, the Agency is proposing to adjust the
intervention thresholds as shown in the table below, to reflect the
differences in the crash correlations of each BASIC:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Proposed
BASICS intervention intervention
thresholds (%) thresholds (%)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsafe Driving Crash Indicator HOS 65 65
Compliance.............................
Vehicle Maintenance..................... 80 75
Controlled Substances/Alcohol HM 80 90
Compliance Driver Fitness..............
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Agency notes that lowering the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC
intervention threshold will identify a new set of motor carriers to
receive warning letters so that they may address non-compliance issues
before crashes occur. The changes would maintain the current
intervention thresholds of 65% for the BASICs with the strongest
relationship to crash risk. While fewer carriers will be identified for
interventions in those BASICs where FMCSA proposes to raise the
threshold to 90%, a similar number of carriers will be identified
across all BASICs as under the current intervention thresholds. In
addition, under the proposed changes the carriers prioritized for
interventions will have a higher crash rate than the carriers currently
prioritized for interventions. We examined the interstate carriers that
are identified as at or above intervention threshold in any of the six
BASICs (HM is excluded as it is handled in a different analysis). The
effectiveness testing, which uses historical data, showed under the
current thresholds that 39,454 carriers at or above intervention
thresolds had a crash rate of 5.12 crashes per 100 Pus and under the
proposed thresholds 41,012 carriers at or above intervention threshold
had a crash rate of 5.49 crashes per 100 PUs. This is a 7% increase in
crash rate. A recent snapshot of SMS data (Dec 2014) shows that 2,431
carriers are newly identified while 453 are no longer identified with
any of the six BASICs at or above the intervention threshold.

Proposed HM Compliance BASIC Changes

Industry and enforcement stakeholders raised concerns to FMCSA that
large non-CT HM carriers have difficulty improving in the HM Compliance
BASIC because they are being unfairly compared to CT HM carriers. Non-
CT HM and CT HM carriers have different operations and as a result they
often receive different violations. After analyzing the issue
carefully, FMCSA determined that segmenting the HM Compliance BASIC by
CT and non-CT carriers will address this bias and improve the SMS's
ability to identify HM carriers with serious safety problems.
FMCSA studied the feasibility of segmenting the HM Compliance BASIC
by business type and found that for

[[Page 37039]]

most motor carriers that operate CTs, the CTs make up a majority of the
carrier's inspections. A carrier was categorized as a CT carrier if
more than 50% of its inspections indicated the vehicles were CTs, and
for most that percentage was actually much higher. Analysis shows that
there are a sufficient number of carriers for both segments in all
safety event groups (SEGs) for effective assessment. FMCSA reviewed
BASIC percentile changes with segmentation and found that large CT
carriers would see an increase in percentiles, while large non-CT
carriers would see a decrease. Small carriers, both CT and non-CT, will
not see a change.

HM Cargo Segmentation Impact
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEG HM inspections Current BASIC % New BASIC non-CT % New BASIC CT %
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5-10............................... 80 Same....................... Same.
11-15.............................. 80 Same....................... Same.
16-40.............................. 80 Same....................... Same.
41-100............................. 80 71% (-9%).................. 85% (+5%).
100+............................... 80 62% (-18%)................. 90% (+10%).
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With these changes, FMCSA is confident that the data in the HM
Compliance BASIC appropriately reflects the distinct operations of
these carriers. As a result, FMCSA proposes to make the HM Compliance
BASIC information available to the public.

Violating Out-of-Service Orders

Currently, when a carrier is cited for violating an OOS Order,
these violations are associated with the same BASIC as the initial OOS
violation. However, the behavior of deciding to violate an OOS Order is
more closely related to a motor carrier's or driver's safety judgment,
regardless of the underlying OOS condition.
FMCSA reviewed these violations and analyzed the potential impact
of reclassifying violations of an OOS Order to the Unsafe Driving
BASIC. The Agency found that the crash rate of carriers at or above the
intervention threshold in the Unsafe Driving BASIC will remain the same
under this proposed change. Moreover, consolidating these OOS
violations in the Unsafe Driving BASIC will help enforcement and motor
carriers better identify and correct driver-related safety issues.
Therefore, FMCSA proposes to move all violations of operating while OOS
to the Unsafe Driving BASIC.

Changing the Maximum Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT)

The Utilization Factor (UF) is an analytical element determined by
dividing a motor carrier's vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by the number
of power units (PU) in the carrier's fleet. The UF provides a more
accurate picture of a carrier's safety and compliance. The UF is used
in the Unsafe Driving BASIC and Crash Indicator BASIC when a carrier
has a higher than normal utilization of its vehicles (VMT per PU). The
UF is currently limited to 200,000 miles. Industry stakeholders noted
that the current UF is not accurate for some companies with extremely
high utilization. Data reviewed by FMCSA indicates that 200,000 miles
may not be the appropriate cap. Therefore, FMCSA is examining allowing
additional credit to high-utilization carriers to provide a more
accurate picture of the carriers' crash exposure and unsafe driving
behaviors.
FMCSA believes that extending the UF to carriers with VMT per PU up
to 250,000 miles, from the current level of 200,000, will allow for a
better measure of exposure for carriers with very high utilization.
During the preview, carriers will be able to see the individual impacts
of this change.
FMCSA expects to begin a preview of the proposed enhancements later
in 2015. Information on the availability of the preview will be made
available on the SMS Web site, and the Agency will publish a subsequent
Federal Register notice. Prior to implementation, motor carriers will
be able to log in with their Portal account or PINs to view their own
data and any proposed re-designed formats. The general public will be
able to access simulated carrier data in order to view the proposed
enhancements. During the preview period, FMCSA will hold several public
webinars to provide stakeholders with detailed information about the
SMS methodology enhancements.

II. Request for Comments

In advance of the SMS preview, FMCSA requests comments on the above
enhancements to the SMS. Commenters are requested to provide supporting
data wherever appropriate.

Issued on: June 22, 2015.
T.F. Scott Darling, III,
Chief Counsel.
[FR Doc. 2015-15907 Filed 6-26-15; 8:45 am]
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