The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released a report outlining its plan to reform its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program. The reforms were made necessary by a 2015 congressional order designed to make travel safer on Missouri and U.S. roadways. This report has been referred to by Congress and the FMCSA as a corrective action plan. Among its key reforms is an effort to make it easier for trucking companies and motor carriers to understand the CSA scoring system and calculate their own scores.
Other major reforms outlined in the report include improving the quality of the data the CSA uses to score motor carriers. The CSA Safety Measurement System will be replaced with a new system for scoring carriers. It will be based on an absolute system for scoring, rather than the system of relative scores that compares carriers to other carriers on the road.
The National Academies of Science was also involved in the process as it outlined a number of reforms that the FMCSA ultimately included in its report. Indeed, the FMCSA scrapped the reforms it proposed in 2015 to take into account broader reforms suggested by the NAS. The FMCSA said it plans to involve the different states and the motor carriers as well in order to gather better data on motor vehicle accidents and total vehicle miles traveled.
With better information, the FMCSA might be able to implement policies that make road travel safer for large trucks and small vehicles too. Individuals who are injured in truck accidents may be entitled to compensation for lost wages, pain and suffering, medical expenses or other damages. An attorney with experience in personal injury law could help in such a case by identifying liable parties. An attorney might attempt to negotiate a settlement or draft a complaint seeking damages.
