In The News

OOIDA asks DOT to stop publishing misleading safety data

(August 26, 2014 - Grain Valley, Mo.) – The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has joined other industry representatives in requesting that individual carrier scores produced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration be removed from publicly available websites. OOIDA has long held the view, backed by outside evaluations, that these scores are subject to significant accuracy issues that paint a misleading picture of individual motor carrier safety.
 
OOIDA signed a CSA Coalition Letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx asking that data generated and posted for the public in the FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) system have restricted access because the statistics do not represent an accurate safety assessment of motor carriers.  
 
“Our Association and our members place a high priority on highway safety,” said Todd Spencer, Executive Vice-President, OOIDA. “Having accurate, relevant and up-to-date information is paramount to knowing the true condition of a carrier and making any conclusions about its safety, good or bad. Unfortunately, CSA does not meet that standard.”
 
The letter points to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found that the Safety Measurement System “suffers from fundamental data sufficiency and methodology issues that seriously affect the reliability of motor carriers’ scores.”  
 
The letter also urges the DOT to make improvements to the CSA system in the future.
 
“Because businesses make decisions based upon published scores of a motor carrier’s safety rating, it is vital that such information be correct,” said Spencer. “The unintended consequences can be detrimental to a business or to public safety. Further, CSA was developed as a tool for enforcement agencies, and nothing in our request changes their access to information about carriers.”
 
The coalition signing the letter was also made up of other industry representatives including the American Trucking Associations, America Bus Association, American Moving & Storage Association, National Private Trucking Council, National School Transportation Association, National Tank Truck Carriers, Specialized Carriers & Rigging, Truckload Carriers Association, United Motorcoach Association.
 
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is the only national trade association exclusively representing the interests of small-business trucking professionals and professional truck drivers. OOIDA was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the greater Kansas City, Mo. area. The Association currently has more than 150,000 members from all 50 states and Canada.