WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration didn’t miss a beat in going live with CSA this weekend after a federal appeals court quashed a suit that could have stayed parts of the rule and blocked the agency from releasing the carrier safety data.

Regulators were waiting on the court decision before officially putting CSA in place on Dec. 12. The new safety fitness regime, which officially replaces Safestat, makes much of carriers’ scored available to the public. 

(Incidentally, the acronym CSA still stands, but the agency changed the name to Compliance, Safety, Accountability from the formerly known title of Comprehensive Safety Analysis).

The court ruled that the petitioners hadn’t met the standards for a stay pending court review.
However, even though the court refused to block the FMCSA from publishing the data right now, it did establish a briefing schedule for the lawsuit to continue, if petitioners wish to carry on, in February 2011.

In the suit, the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, The Expedite Alliance of North America and the Air & Expedited Motor Carriers Association argued that publishing safety ratings would cause "irreparable competitive and economic harm" if shippers decided to blackball the many drivers and small carriers who could underachieve at just one so-called BASIC category, but be otherwise safe to operate.

They also insisted that branding carriers who don’t meet some benchmarks could expose the companies to vicarious liability cases brought on by aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The American Trucking Associations doesn’t agree with the lawsuit, but in a recent letter to FMCSA, manager of safety & security operations, Boyd Stephenson, urged the agency not to disclose carrier scores until the agency can show "information about how the crash severity connections were calculated."