ARLINGTON, Va. – CSA two thousand and …. counting. 

The American Trucking Associations is not jumping on the bandwagon to block CSA 2010 days before it’s supposed to take effect, but the carrier group agrees with opponents who want fleet rankings shielded from public view as it continues to press regulators for further changes.

In a letter sent this week to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, ATA’s manager of safety & security operations, Boyd Stephenson, urged the agency not to disclose carrier scores from so-called BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories) until the agency can show "information about how the crash severity connections were calculated."

The problem, says ATA, is that many violations are determined too broadly in several BASICs and certain offences carry too high of a weighting, thereby improperly branding those carriers unsafe in the public’s eyes.

"Until FMCSA can confirm that the system accurately identifies unsafe carriers in a category, it is inappropriate to make carriers’ scores in that category publicly available, as they may erroneously label safe, responsible carriers as unsafe," the letter states.

That’s generally the argument put forth by a coalition of smaller carrier groups that filed a suit to have CSA stayed.

The suit states that publishing BASIC safety ratings would cause "irreparable competitive and economic harm" if shippers blackballed the many drivers and small carriers who could underachieve at just one BASIC, but are otherwise safe to operate.

Responding to the filing in Appeals Court, FMCSA said this week that it would not be implementing the system until at least Dec. 12. (That’s on top of two recent short postponements of Nov. 30 and Dec. 5).

Stephenson wrote that the agency has not disclosed the algorithms in its violation severity weightings. Reportedly the weightings are in part based on patchy crash reports across various jurisdictions and the enforcement community’s observations from the field.

"CSA should be based only on the statistically demonstrated relationship between violating the (regulations) and causing a crash, not anecdotal experience and subjective viewpoints," Stephenson says.

ATA recommends that FMCSA modify severity weights so that they better reflect crash risk, as well as define disparities among "generic" violations of varying degrees which are now lumped together.

For example, in the Cargo Related BASIC, a harsh score of ’10’ is assigned for "damage to the securement system," or "failure to prevent cargo shifting," but, as ATA points out, the infractions are vague and the severe score does not account for minor problems that don’t necessarily make the carrier unsafe.

At the same time, ATA wants to see higher severity weightings for what it says are more serious violations in the Drugs & Alcohol BASIC and for inadequate brakes.

"These violations represent those where a monetary or administrative penalty may not accurately reflect the safety risks of engaging in the behavior."

While it shares many concerns with the groups involved in the suit, ATA is not supporting legal action, saying that it’s confident FMCSA is willing to improve the system and implement further changes.