Safety metrics have used by fleet carriers help to avoid having problems with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. It is the federal agency that, in fact, can regulate interstate highway transportation. There are serious accidents, driver complaints, and violations from roadside inspections that are just some of the things which can trigger an FMCSA audit.
Safety Metrics
What follows is a list of the top five metrics every motor carrier should be tracking on a routine basis.
1. Inspection Selection System (ISS)
The Inspection Selection System or ISS program is one the FMCSA and its state law enforcement partners use to aim motor carriers’ vehicles for roadside inspections. Basically, the ISS does dictate how often a carriers’ vehicle will be stopping for roadside inspections.
2. Safety Metrics – Accident Rate Information
In fact, motor carriers should actually also track accident rate, which is expressing as the number of DOT-recordable accidents the carrier that adds up per million miles traveling.
The carrier’s accident rate is really important. That is because the FMCSA does consider it along with any violations that are discovering it is during a compliance review/ That would, in fact, calculate the carrier’s rating. Moreover, the industry average accident rate for most carriers is 0.74 accidents per million miles.
3. Metrics – Out-of-Service (OOS) Rates
There is another critical metric carrier that should be watching. Also, those are vehicle and driver out-of-service rates. These rates, which are publicly available on each carrier’s SAFER profile, would indicate how often a carrier’s vehicles and drivers are being placing out-of-service (i.e., prohibited from operating) for very serious violations during the roadside inspections.
4. Safety Measurement System (SMS)
Since 2010, the FMCSA has used its Compliance, Accountability system to actually prioritize federally-regulated motor carriers for enforcement action. The Safety Measurement System (SMS) is one significant component of CSA, which does rank carriers against their peers in seven categories that are known as the BASICs.
5. Safety Fitness Determination
A carrier’s Safety Fitness Determination (aka safety rating) is the evaluation of its compliance with the FMCSA’s fitness standards. It does appear in 49 C.F.R. Part 385.
