WASHINGTON, DC— The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is upgrading its Safety Measurement System (SMS) website in response to industry feedback to make it more accessible and useful.
The SMS site is where carriers and the public go for safety performance data the agency uses to determine which carriers pose a risk and need to be investigated, under its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program. Last year the site hosted nearly 48 million user sessions, the agency said.
The re-vamped site will: Give users single-click access to a carrier’s summary status in the Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC) to determine if a carrier’s performance will lead to enforcement intervention; In response to a comment by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), the agency will clarify how on-road performance data and investigation results are factored into a carrier’s status; Let users download the public data for all carriers in the same safety event group, such as inspections or crashes, used to rank the carrier’s BASIC percentile. This does not include the Crash Indicator and HazMat Compliance data; Highlight a carrier’s performance in each BASIC to identify any trends.
The agency will include descriptions of a carrier’s measure and explanations of its relationship to the carrier’s percentile; Show a carrier’s current insurance and authority status; Post the carrier’s enforcement case history. In response to a suggestion by American Trucking Associations, the agency will provide a link to its Civil Penalties Web Site; Have more customizable displays and graphs to portray safety performance over time; Display the total number of inspections and a breakdown of the number of inspections with violations; Clarify SMS terminology; Show carriers their Inspection Selection System data on the Carrier Overview page; Show driver and vehicle out-of-service information based on public data from its Safety and Fitness Electronic Records site; In response to a suggestion by ATA, the agency will provide a link to its test of the Safety Management System’s effectiveness. It also will display the results in graphs on the web site. In response to a suggestion by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the agency will post the carrier’s “Doing Business As” name.
The changes come into effect August 2 and starting August 20, the agency will host a series of webinars to explain these changes and answer any questions.
