ARLINGTON, VA. — Time to be more open about CSA's weaknesses, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) told the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) yesterday.

The ATA, in a white paper available here, outlined examples of how the agency highlights the benefits of CSA, but could improve clarity when it comes to the program's weaknesses.

A complete, candid picture is needed, ATA said, if improvements are to be made.

“ATA’s members are supportive of CSA’s objectives, but they are also eager to see FMCSA make much needed improvements,” said ATA Vice President for Safety Policy Rob Abbott. “However, the first step in that process is a candid acknowledgement of the program’s limitations.

“Appropriate and effective recommendations will only come from fully informed participants, and it is our sincere hope that the subcommittee members will be provided with a balanced and complete assessment of the program, including its limitations," he said.

In its paper, ATA points out:

Carriers’ scores in three of CSA’s seven measurement categories (43 percent of the system) do not effectively identify future crash risk;

FMCSA only has sufficient violation data to assign a percentile rank (in at least one category) to 12 percent of active carriers;

And as a recent analysis by the American Transportation Research Institute highlighted: perceived safety risk is heavily dependent on the amount of data available on each motor carrier and it is wrong to conclude that carriers with insufficient data to be scored are safer than those that have reported data.