WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are asking for public feedback on finding a new way to determine whether motor carriers are safe to operate on the nation’s roads.

In an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published on Monday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration stated that it is not yet making specific proposals but wants input on potentially using its safety management system (SMS) methodology to issue safety fitness determinations (SFDs).

“The Agency’s current SFD process is resource-intensive and reaches only a small percentage of motor carriers,” FMCSA stated. “A successful SFD methodology may: target metrics that are most directly connected to safety outcomes, provide for accurate identification of unsafe motor carriers, and incentivize the adoption of safety-improving practices.”

With crashes involving large trucks increasing over the past decade — up over 40% between 2013 and 2022, according to government data — FMCSA has been under pressure to get better at identifying unsafe carriers, and the rules FMCSA uses to identify them have a direct effect on carriers’ ability to stay in business as well as on their hiring of commercial truck drivers.

FMCSA currently uses a three-tiered comprehensive review (CR) process that may result in a “satisfactory,” “conditional” or “unsatisfactory” safety rating.

Of the CRs conducted in FY 2019 (the last year before the pandemic limited the number of CRs conducted due to safety concerns), 306 resulted in a final safety rating of unsatisfactory, 1,842 in a final safety rating of conditional and 2,701 in a final safety rating of satisfactory.

“Only a small percentage of carriers with safety management control deficiencies are required to submit corrective action to continue operating and avoid a final unfit determination based on an unsatisfactory rating,” according to FMCSA.

In the proposed rulemaking, FMCSA seeks comment on a list of 12 questions, including whether it should retain this three-tier rating system or — as it asked in a similar Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued in 2016 that was never acted upon — replace it with a single rating of “unfit” for those carriers that did not successfully complete a safety review.

“Under such a structure, carriers that completed safety fitness reviews successfully would continue operating and not appear different, in terms of their SFD, from carriers that had not yet been reviewed,” FMCSA states. “Would this approach be sufficient to ensure safety?”

The agency also notes in the current proposed rulemaking that the existing SFD does not use all available safety data, such as all inspection-based data. It requests input, therefore, on whether its SMS methodology should be used to issue SFDs in a manner similar to what was noted in the 2016 proposed rulemaking.

“If so, what adjustments, if any, should be made to that proposal?” FMCSA asks.

“If not, should the agency include more safety data in the SFD process in other ways and, if so, how? The Agency is interested in comments specifically on whether the integration of on-road safety data into the SFD process would improve the assessment of motor carriers’ safety posture and the identification of unfit motor carriers.”

Other questions FMCSA is asking for comment on include:

• Should motor carriers of passengers be subject to higher standards than other motor carriers in terms of safety fitness rating methodology?
• How will states be affected if the agency changes the SFD? What resources might be needed to accommodate any changes, and how long would it take to incorporate proposed changes?
• Given the importance of driver behavior in preventing crashes, how should the agency incorporate driver behavior data into the SFD? What data should the agency use? How should this methodology distinguish between data resulting in a conviction and data without a conviction?
• Should SFD consider motor carriers’ adoption and use of safety technologies in a carrier’s rating? How should this fit into the SFD methodology?
• Given that unsafe driving behaviors, such as speeding and texting while driving, are highly correlated with crash risk, should the safety fitness rating methodology give more weight to [such] unsafe driving violations?

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