[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY: THE FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION'S
OVERSIGHT OF HIGH-RISK CARRIERS
=======================================================================
(110-57)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 11, 2007
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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36-688 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2007
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon DON YOUNG, Alaska
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
Columbia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
CORRINE BROWN, Florida VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
BOB FILNER, California STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JERRY MORAN, Kansas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California GARY G. MILLER, California
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington Carolina
RICK LARSEN, Washington TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
JULIA CARSON, Indiana SAM GRAVES, Missouri
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri Virginia
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
DORIS O. MATSUI, California TED POE, Texas
NICK LAMPSON, Texas DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio CONNIE MACK, Florida
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa York
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina Louisiana
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
JOHN J. HALL, New York MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
VACANCY
(ii)
?
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JERROLD NADLER, New York DON YOUNG, Alaska
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
JULIA CARSON, Indiana GARY G. MILLER, California
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York Carolina
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina Virginia
MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JERRY MCNERNEY, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
BOB FILNER, California TED POE, Texas
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Louisiana
DORIS O. MATSUI, California JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
VACANCY JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota (Ex Officio)
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi
TESTIMONY
Fleming, Susan A., Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, U.S.
Government Accountability Office, Washington, D.C.............. 2
Hersman, Hon. Deborah A.P., Member, National Transportation
Safety Board, Washington, D.C.................................. 2
Hill, Hon. John H., Administrator Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, Washington, D.C................................ 2
Scovel, III, Hon. Calvin L., Inspector General, U.S. Department
of Transportation, Washington, D.C............................. 2
Urquhart, Captain Ken, Commercial Vehicle Enforcement, Minnesota
State Patrol, Mendota Heights, Minnesota....................... 2
Vaughn, Chief Steve, Enforcement Services Division, California
Highway Patrol, Sacramento, California......................... 2
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania............................. 31
Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona.............................. 32
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Fleming, Susan A................................................. 36
Hersman, Deborah A. P............................................ 57
Hill, John H..................................................... 73
Scovel, III, Calvin L............................................ 96
Urquhart, Captain Ken............................................ 109
Vaughn, Chief Steve.............................................. 124
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Hill, Hon. John H., Administrator Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, Washington, D.C.:
Responses to questions from Rep. Buchanan...................... 84
Responses to questions from Rep. Carney........................ 85
Responses to questions from Rep. DeFazio....................... 87
Responses to questions from Rep. Napolitano.................... 93
Vaughn, Chief Steve, Enforcement Services Division, California
Highway Patrol, Sacramento, California, responses to questions
from Rep. DeFazio.............................................. 136
ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD
The American Trucking Associations, written statement............ 138
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HEARING ON MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY: THE FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY
ADMINISTRATION'S OVERSIGHT OF HIGH-RISK CARRIERS
----------
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
House of Representatives,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter
A. DeFazio [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. DeFazio. The Committee will come to order.
Thank you all for being here.
I will keep my opening remarks brief in the interest of
hoping to hear from all of you at least initially before the
votes, which inevitably interrupt all of these proceedings.
When Congress created the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration in 1999, we had some pretty specific objectives
in mind in terms of cutting the rate of accident fatality, and
we have fallen short of those goals. I am holding this hearing
in the hope of determining what we might do to move us along
more expeditiously toward meeting those goals.
There are a number of concerns that I will express later in
the hearing, particularly in questioning, but witnesses may
want to anticipate and address those a bit. One thing that
concerns me a lot is when we actually physically do roadside
inspections, which is a very small minority of the operations
on an annual basis, we find pretty consistently that we are
taking about a quarter of the trucks out of service. That
causes me a lot of concern: how might we better address that?
Then I have other concerns about FMCSA's rating system and
when and how they determine someone to be unsatisfactory and
what remedies are taken after that point, but we will get into
that more later.
With that, I would turn to the Ranking Member, Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for calling this very important hearing on the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration's oversight of high-risk
carriers.
With 5,212 fatalities and 114,000 injuries related to
trucks in 2005, truck safety is an area which should remain a
top priority for our Subcommittee and for this Congress.
Overall, moving goods by trucks on our Nation's highways is
very safe. In 2005, trucks traveled more 220 billion miles and
transported more than 10 billion tons of goods to people all
over the Country. In fact, 84 percent of all the goods we use
and consume get to us by truck. A strong trucking industry is
essential to our economy and our daily life.
Despite all the benefits we receive from trucks and from
the trucking industry, work still needs to be done to improve
truck safety. In 2005, there were 2.34 fatal crashes per 100
million miles traveled by trucks. This rate has greatly
improved over the years. The number of fatalities is still too
high. It is important that we try to develop strategies to
further reduce this rate.
Today's hearing on the Government's targeting of high-risk
carriers is very important. By targeting these high-risk
companies, we have a chance to make the highways safer for
everyone, not just drivers of passenger vehicles for truck
drivers as well.
I look forward to hearing from all of the witnesses to tell
us how we can do a good job, make good work even better in this
area.
I yield back. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
With that, again in the interest of getting in your
testimony, we will move right to the testimony from the
witnesses, and we would first hear from Administrator Hill.
Mr. Hill.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN H. HILL, ADMINISTRATOR FEDERAL
MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.; THE
HONORABLE CALVIN L. SCOVEL, III, INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.; THE HONORABLE
DEBORAH A.P. HERSMAN, MEMBER, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY
BOARD, WASHINGTON, D.C.; SUSAN A. FLEMING, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE,
WASHINGTON, D.C.; CHIEF STEVE VAUGHN, ENFORCEMENT SERVICES
DIVISION, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA;
CAPTAIN KEN URQUHART, COMMERCIAL VEHICLE ENFORCEMENT, MINNESOTA
STATE PATROL, MENDOTA HEIGHTS, MINNESOTA
Mr. Hill. Good afternoon, Chairman DeFazio and Ranking
Member Duncan and Members of the Subcommittee.
I am pleased to describe how the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration is working to make the Nation's highways
safer through better commercial vehicle safety operations, and
I also want to commend the Subcommittee for choosing State
MCSAP agencies to testify today. Improving CMV safety without
their strong involvement would not be possible.
2005 had one of the lowest truck fatality rates in 30
years. This means that despite more trucks traveling more
miles, the proportion of fatalities is down. In addition,
preliminary numbers for 2006 indicate the number of people
killed in large truck related crashes decreased by an estimated
3.7 percent. However, we know that despite these gains, the
drop in overall highway deaths involving commercial vehicles
has still been too high.
FMCSA uses available highway performance data to identify
high-risk carriers using a program called the Safety Status
Measurement System or SafeStat. Both the DOT Office of
Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office have
reviewed SafeStat and, while identifying ways the system can be
improved, they have consistently concluded SafeStat is
successful in identifying high-risk carriers. The Agency
appreciates the constructive nature of their recommendations
and is taking steps to implement the findings of their reviews.
In fiscal year 2006, FMCSA and our State partners conducted
over 15,000 compliance reviews, a 33 percent increase over
2004, and 3.3 million roadside inspections, an increase of 9
percent. While it is extremely difficult to measure deaths that
were prevented, we know from past independent analysis that
carriers improve safety after a compliance review or a roadside
inspection.
Working with States on complete, accurate and timely crash
and inspection data from several years, we have implemented a
variety of data programs to improve reporting and we have seen
improvement. Between 2004 and 2007, the number of large truck
crashes reported increased by 32 percent and the number of
States achieving a good progress rating from our Agency has
increased from 25 to 40 and the number of States needing
improvement has been reduced from 12 to 3. We are committed to
continuing our work with the States in this endeavor.
States have roles in regulating and enforcing commercial
vehicle transportation. That makes them uniquely able to
implement key safety programs, and I would like to highlight
just one.
SAFETEA-LU authorized the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance
Program (or MCSAP) to be used as a traffic enforcement tool
while not having to conduct a commercial vehicle safety
inspection. The authority also allows reimbursement of State
traffic and enforcement activities against non-commercial
vehicles when the conditions exist in and around a commercial
vehicle that would create a crash. This new initiative you
authorized allows FMCSA and the States to involve a broader
population of law enforcement to expand enforcement and reduce
commercial vehicle related crashes.
In cooperation with NHTSA, we recently implemented the
Ticketing against Aggressive Cars and Trucks TACT program in
the State of Washington. NHTSA's success in combining education
and enforcement has been proven successful in increasing
seatbelt usage, and this similarly structured program of
evaluating how well TACT works is something that we are seeing
as an effective tool to use in our enforcement endeavor.
GAO also has recently audited the program and has
recommended that we do a national rollout. Currently, there are
22 States that are involved in some manner of doing non-
commercial vehicle enforcement activities with their grants.
The last thing I want to mention briefly is that CSA 2010
is a key component of our future focus for improving
identifying high-risk carriers. CSA stands for Comprehensive
Safety Analysis. We hope to have it fully operational by the
year 2010.
FMCSA will use all safety violations to assess carrier
safety in identified areas, not just a limited list of
violations that have been determined to be critical or acute
and by including all violations in a motor carrier safety
fitness determination, we will be addressing one of the
National Transportation Safety Board's most wanted items for
FMCSA.
Another important feature of this new model is that safety
assessments and fitness determinations will be updated monthly
based upon performance data. FMCSA will no longer rely solely
on the results of an onsite compliance review to make a safety
fitness determination when CSA 2010 is invoked. This will allow
the carrier's safety fitness status to reflect ongoing
performance, not a snapshot of the operational safety at the
time of the onsite review.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Committee's
support of commercial vehicle safety. I look forward to working
with you to achieve our mutual goals and would be happy to
respond to your questions.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Administrator.
With that, I would turn to Calvin Scovel, Inspector
General, Department of Transportation.
Mr. Scovel.
Mr. Scovel. Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan,
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today on actions taken by FMCSA to improve its
oversight of high-risk motor carriers.
FMCSA's primary purpose is to reduce crash related injuries
and fatalities involving the Nation's over 700,000 registered
motor carriers. My testimony today is based on our extensive
body of work over the past several years.
FMCSA has made and continues to make important progress,
but further reductions in the fatality rate will be difficult
to achieve. A plateau has been reached, and in some years the
number of annual fatalities has actually increased. Since its
establishment in 1999, FMCSA has dramatically increased its
oversight activity.
It can, however, take further steps in three specific
areas. One, it can better target carriers for enhanced
oversight through the use of more complete crash data. Two, it
can look for ways to strengthen its compliance reviews when
vulnerabilities are identified. Three, it can close a loophole
that allows repeated violations of safety rules by the same
carriers.
First, better targeting for enhanced oversight: FMCSA uses
a safety measurement system called SafeStat that primarily
utilizes crash data along with other factors to identify motor
carriers whose history suggests the need for greater oversight.
However, many non-fatal crashes are missing from its database
because they are not reported to FMCSA by the States. Such
missing data can skew SafeStat results, so that lower risk
companies are targeted for more oversight. FMCSA is currently
working with the States to ensure that all reportable crashes
are included in the risk ranking.
Two, enhancing compliance reviews: While we have not
examined the compliance review process in detail, a recent
accident here in the Washington area highlights how compliance
reviews could be strengthened to increase the likelihood that
all safety issues will be addressed. This past March, a large
truck owned by BK Trucking of New Jersey crashed on Interstate
495 while on its way to Virginia, killing a local resident, the
father of two young children. The driver was operating the
truck on a suspended commercial driver's license.
Due to its SafeStat ranking, BK Trucking had undergone a
compliance review by FMCSA the previous month. We were told
that while the driver's name did surface during the review, he
was identified as an independent owner-operator and therefore
not subject to a driver's license check. This was in accord
with FMCSA's process.
As a result, however, the driver's poor record which
included citations in six States for speeding, defective brakes
and a previous charge of driving with a suspended license was
not uncovered during the compliance review.
The case indicates how difficult and complex FMCSA's
responsibilities can be and that additional guidance may be
needed on determining whether drivers are actually owner-
operators or rather have simply been classified as such to
avoid closer scrutiny by FMCSA. We further believe that FMCSA
should consider expanding its compliance review to include
sampling of all drivers including owner-operators to determine
whether they hold valid driver's licenses.
Stopping repeat violators: A loophole in FMCSA's
enforcement policy has allowed hundreds of repeat violators of
safety rules to escape the maximum civil penalties that by law
can be assessed when a pattern of violations is noted on
enforcement claim documents provided to the carrier. If certain
mitigating factors exist, however, such as a carrier's
inability to pay a civil fine, then penalties are waived.
When no penalty is assessed, FMCSA does not document the
violation in its notice of claim. Consequently, it appears that
no violation occurred. In such cases, a pattern of violations
can be difficult to establish. A carrier with limited ability
to pay then can repeatedly violate the same rule yet avoid a
more serious penalty as a repeat violator.
This happens often. Between September, 2000 and October,
2004, only 33 out of 533 motor carriers or 6 percent that
repeatedly violated either hours of service or drug and alcohol
regulations received the maximum penalty.
It is important that FMCSA establish some method to deter
those repeat offenders who are able to avoid fines due to an
inability to pay. FMCSA has addressed this problem.
Finally, a new compliance enforcement model is expected to
be deployed by 2010. FMCSA has been working since 2004 on a new
model that will overhaul its systems that identify and target
high-risk motor carriers and monitor their performance.
While we have not extensively reviewed the new model, any
data driven model would benefit from improved data
completeness. Strong enforcement will also need to remain a
significant element of FMCSA oversight.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my statement. I would be happy
to answer any questions that you or other Members of the
Subcommittee may have.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
Next will be the Honorable Deborah Hersman, National
Transportation Safety Board.
Ms. Hersman.
Ms. Hersman. Good afternoon, Chairman DeFazio, Ranking
Member Duncan and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you all
for inviting the National Transportation Safety Board to
testify on FMCSA's oversight of high-risk carriers.
When transportation tragedies occur, the Safety Board helps
restore the public's confidence in our systems by conducting
thorough objective investigations and making recommendations so
that those accidents don't happen again.
One year ago, Congress turned to the Safety Board to
investigate the collapse of the ceiling panels in the Big Dig
tunnel in Boston because of our reputation for thorough
independent investigations. Yesterday, the Board completed our
work on this tragedy, citing a failure of materials and
management oversight and making recommendations regarding
tunnel safety.
This Committee can assist the Federal Highway
Administration in ensuring tunnel safety by making sure they
have the adequate authority to require regular inspections of
tunnels.
Everyday there are approximately 19,000 accidents on our
Nation's highways, causing over 43,000 fatalities and 3 million
injuries every year. Accidents involving large trucks comprised
about 10 percent of those fatal accidents.
Motor carrier accidents that we investigate are typically
not caused by one thing. They are a chain of causes or events
that ultimately result in fatal accidents. Often, these
accidents involve poor performing carriers. It is not unusual
for us to find that carriers involved in accidents have a
number of problems. They may have high out of service rates,
undisclosed medical conditions of their drivers and/or
falsified logbooks.
These traits are very telling to us because they are
precursors to an accident. Understanding the significance of
these poor safety conditions is the first step in preventing
future accidents.
Today, I would like to focus on three areas in which the
FMCSA has proposals pending for improvements: the compliance
review process, medically unqualified drivers and electronic
data recorders for hours of service. These initiatives could
make the difference in effectively removing unsafe carriers
from the road.
One of the major issues surrounding FMCSA's oversight role
is the effectiveness of the compliance review process. Carriers
are rated on six safety fitness factors. In a Safety Board
study of motor coach accidents from 1999, the Board made
recommendations to elevate the factors for vehicles and drivers
to ensure that carriers with poor ratings in either of these
critical areas would not receive a satisfactory rating overall.
Earlier this year, the Board completed an investigation
into a motor coach fire near Dallas, Texas that killed 23
passengers during the evacuation for Hurricane Rita. In this
particular accident, numerous safety violations were uncovered
prior to the accident, yet this carrier still had a
satisfactory rating.
Another major oversight issue for the Board concerns
medically unqualified drivers. Following a 1999 Mother's Day
bus crash in New Orleans in which 22 people were killed, the
Safety Board issued eight recommendations to the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration. We outlined a comprehensive
medical oversight program.
Although the FMCSA has made progress on one of these
recommendations, seven remain classified in an unacceptable
status. The Safety Board is convinced that for any commercial
vehicle driver oversight program to be effective, it is
necessary for there to be a systemic approach that addresses
all of the issues conveyed in the eight recommendations.
Finally, I must talk to you about how technology can help
prevent fatigue related accidents. As you know, paper logbooks
offer many opportunities for drivers to play fast and loose
with the hours of service rules. Recognizing this lack of
accountability, the Safety Board has recommended tamper-proof
data recorders for over 30 years for motor carriers.
The FMCSA this year issued an NPRM on EOBRs, Electronic On-
Board Recorders. However, it does not apply to all carriers.
The program relies on the FMCSA's ability to catch poor
performers through its compliance review program. Given the
current problems with the compliance review program and the
fact that FMCSA can only audit about 1 percent of all carriers
annually, we don't believe that this is the most effective way
to address hours of service issues.
In summary, the Board urges the Congress to support the
FMCSA in its efforts to improve the compliance review program,
to establish effective medical oversight and to require on-
board recorders for all motor carriers. Taken together, these
changes will begin to remove high-risk carriers from our
Nation's highways.
Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Now we turn to Ms. Susan Fleming from the Government
Accountability Office.
Ms. Fleming. Good afternoon, Chairman Oberstar, Chairman
DeFazio and Members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss FMCSA's oversight
of motor carriers that pose high crash risk. This is an
important issue. About 5,500 people die each year as a result
of crashes involving large commercial trucks or buses and about
160,000 more are injured.
Due to the size of the motor carrier industry, FMCSA is
only able to conduct a small percentage of compliance reviews.
It is therefore crucial that FMCSA identify the most unsafe
carriers to either improve their operations or to prohibit them
from operating.
My testimony today has three parts: the extent to which
FMCSA identifies carriers that subsequently have high crash
rates; how FMCSA ensures that its compliance reviews are
conducted thoroughly and consistently; and the extent to which
FMCSA follows up with carriers with serious safety violations.
By and large, FMCSA does a good job in each of these areas.
That being said, we have identified areas that could be
improved. First SafeStat, the data driven model that FMCSA uses
to identify carriers that pose a high crash risk, is nearly
twice as effective as random selection. Therefore, it has value
for improving safety.
However, its effectiveness could be improved through either
of two enhancements that we analyzed. One entails implying a
statistical approach called the regression analysis instead of
relying on expert judgment to apply weights to each of the four
areas. The other uses the existing SafeStat design but selects
more carriers that scored the worst in the accident evaluation
area.
Both enhancements perform better than the current SafeStat
approach. In fact, the regression approach identified carriers
that had twice as many crashes in a subsequent 18 months than
did SafeStat. We have recommended that FMCSA adopt this
approach.
I will now turn to my second topic, compliance reviews. We
took a high level look at how FMCSA manages its compliance
reviews and found that the Agency does so in a fashion that
meets GAO standards for internal control thereby ensuring
consistency and thoroughness in these reviews. It does so
through establishing compliance review policies and procedures,
classroom and on-the-job training of inspectors, and using an
information system to document the results of its reviews, and
also monitoring for performance.
We also found that compliance reviews almost completely
cover the nine major areas of the Agency's safety regulations.
Moving on to my third point, in fiscal year 2005, FMCSA
followed up with 99 percent of carriers with serious safety
violations to determine whether they had improved or to
prohibit them from operating. In addition, FMCSA monitors
carriers to identify those that are violating out of service
orders.
However, it does not take additional action against many
violators of out of service orders that it identifies. It cited
only 26 of the 768 carriers that had a crash or roadside
inspection while under an out of service order. FMCSA told us
that it does not have enough resources to determine whether all
of these carriers were indeed violating out of service orders.
For example, some of these carriers may have leased their
vehicles to others.
Furthermore, FMCSA does not assess maximum fines against
all carriers that we believe the law requires partly because
FMCSA does not distinguish between carriers with a pattern of
serious safety violations and those that repeat a serious
violation.
Finally, FMCSA assesses maximum fines only for the third
instance of a serious violation. We read the statute as
requiring FMCSA to assess the maximum fine if a serious
violation is repeated once, not only after it is repeated
twice.
We are considering a recommendation that FMCSA revise these
policies in our report that will be issued later this summer.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be
pleased to answer any questions that you or Members of the
Subcommittee might have.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Ms. Fleming.
Chief Steve Vaughn, California Highway Patrol. Chief?
Chief Vaughn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
thank you for the opportunity to speak before this Committee
today. Especially to Congresswoman Napolitano, long-time friend
of the CHP, thank you, ma'am.
CHP provides service to the commercial vehicle industry
through promulgation of regulations pertaining to vehicle
safety, driver fitness and transportation of hazardous and
other materials requiring special load securement.
The department's on-highway commercial enforcement program
consists of 248 officers and 257 non-uniformed commercial
vehicle inspection specialists which operate 16 inspection
facilities and 34 platform scales. These personnel are focused
on the inspection of commercial motor vehicles and their
drivers.
An additional 138 personnel are assigned as mobile road
enforcement officers to allow for the inspection of commercial
vehicles that purposely avoid or due to delivery routes do not
traverse inspection facilities or platform scales.
The CHP's off-highway motor carrier safety program is
staffed by non-uniformed motor carrier specialists that are
dedicated to the inspection of both truck and bus terminals.
There are 246 personnel dedicated to this program.
California's BIT program, Biennial Inspection of Terminals,
is very similar to the compliance review program conducted by
the Feds, but there are some differences. The BIT mandates an
inspection of every terminal in California once every 25
months. The Department conducts approximately 20,000 BIT
inspections annually.
In addition, we have some other responsibilities and
program authorities. They fall in the annual inspection and
certification of school bus, school pupil activity bus, youth
bus and tour bus operators. There are over 26,000 school buses,
1,600 school pupil activity buses, 500 youth buses, 9,400 tour
buses and 4,000 bus terminals that are inspected and certified
annually by the CHP.
We also look for motor carrier compliance with the
controlled substances and alcohol testing of commercial
drivers. We conduct over 11,000 inspections annually in that
area.
We also monitor the motor carriers enrollment into the
California Electronic Pull Notice, a system which requires
motor carriers to register their drivers with DMV and allows
them to receive automated notifications upon changes to the
drivers' status.
The efforts of the CHP has resulted in the most productive
on-highway commercial enforcement program in North America.
Between 2004 and 2006, the CHP conducted an average of 45,313
on-highway inspections each month. We believe a clear
correlation can be drawn between our continued reduction in
commercial motor vehicle mileage death rate and the program
that we have.
I was also asked to provide some thoughts based on
California's experience in the area of motor carrier safety on
how we can improve safety across the Nation.
First, I would recommend that FMCSA serve as a conduit
between Congress and the States and industry. FMCSA needs to
serve more as a safety agency and less as an enforcement
agency.
They should work closely with the States, which I will say
they do, various associations such as the Commercial Vehicle
Safety Alliance, AAMVA and the American Trucking Association to
develop new ideas for legislation and programs. This serves as
a ground-up approach to implementing safety initiatives and
allows for the inclusion of the primary stakeholders prior to
the passage of new laws, regulations or programs.
New technology has also provided us with some excellent
opportunities to improve safety. I believe Congress should
consider new laws to equip commercial motor vehicles with
safety technologies at the time of manufacture, items such as
lane departure warning systems, rollover protection, radar
forward-looking infrared systems and computer enhanced braking
systems.
At the very least, consideration should be given to
applying tax credit incentives for motor carriers and
manufacturers in this area. Motor carriers that are taking this
upon themselves and have equipped their commercial motor
vehicles with these technologies have reported a reduction in
traffic collisions and maintenance costs.
Also, I believe FMCSA should provide States with additional
funding to improve or upgrade existing commercial vehicle
inspection technologies.
Finally, in cooperation with the States and motor carrier
associations, FMCSA should develop a better electronic system
to identify unsafe commercial drivers. I understand they are
currently in the midst of prototyping an electronic driver
notification system similar to the California Pull Notice
program. I would encourage them to expedite the nationwide
development of this system while at the same time being careful
and mindful of the consideration of the fiscal impacts on the
States and their existing programs.
We need to retool the commercial driver's license program
for drivers and how it is administered by the States. I am
hopeful that the recommendations of the Commercial Driver's
License Advisory Committee will be strongly considered when
presented. There needs to be tougher medical qualifications for
drivers and doctors and they need to be held accountable. There
also needs to be mandatory driver training.
Finally, I appreciate the Committee holding this hearing
today and the opportunity to speak on California's experience,
and I will welcome any questions. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Chief.
I now turn to Captain Ken Urquhart with the Minnesota State
Patrol.
Mr. Urquhart. Good afternoon.
Mr. DeFazio. Chairman Oberstar, do you have anything you
want to say at this point? You might be good to him in case you
get pulled over going too fast on your bicycle some day.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Oberstar. I welcome you to the hearing and thank you
for making the trip from Minnesota. You will probably be very
happy to get back there given the temperature and the humidity
out here.
Mr. Urquhart. You're absolutely right, Mr. Chairman. This
weather you have today is weather we had the other day.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. DeFazio and Mr. Oberstar, thank you for
allowing me to address the Committee today.
My name is Ken Urquhart. I am the Commander of our
Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division in the Minnesota State
Patrol. We are the lead MCSAP agency in Minnesota. We do
subgrant about 35 percent of those resources to a partner
agency in our State, the Minnesota Department of
Transportation.
Just to kind of set the tone here, Minnesota in the year
2006 had reached a number of fatalities in our State that was
lower than World War II. So we had not seen that level of
fatalities at that low point since World War II, 1945.
Along with that, truck fatality crashes from 2005 to 2006
were reduced 17 percent, injury crashes, 14 percent and overall
crashes, 12 percent. So we are seeing a steady decline not only
in our truck crashes but crashes across the board.
FMCSA has set a goal for 2011 for the States to achieve a
.16 fatality rate for vehicle miles traveled. We reached .12 in
2006, and we have steadily declined since the year 2000. So we
believe that our comprehensive truck safety program is working.
I am not going to claim all the credit for the reduced
fatalities. There are a number of variables that go into that.
We all know that. But Minnesota is on the right track, and we
are quite proud of that.
As far as our data, one of the things we put into place
during our legislative session in 2002 was to require all
trucks that exceed 10,000 pounds to register and obtain a U.S.
DOT number, whether they operate interstate or intrastate.
Along with that, these owners or these motor carriers that
operate these vehicles even intrastate are not even allowed to
re-register their vehicles until they update their MCS150.
Basically, what we have accomplished there is we have
identified the bulk of our motor carriers no matter how they
operate in Minnesota.
This is done us a great service in the quality and accuracy
of our data. I think Mr. Hill talked about how States have been
improving data. This was the primary reason that Minnesota saw
an improvement in our crash data accuracy and timeliness along
with our inspection data and citations.
The other thing that Minnesota historically does is we
adopt Federal regulation by chapter. So if there are changes
through rulemaking or from Congress, we adopt those by chapter.
We don't have to return to our legislature generally every
year, year after year, to adopt new regulations to remain
harmonious with our Federal colleagues. I think this is a very
efficient way to do things. We are lucky on that fact.
Some of the newer programs that we have in place that we do
give credit to reducing crashes is we implemented two years ago
strictly a driver focused enforcement program, and that cuts
across all lines, not only roadside enforcement with
inspections but also with compliance reviews, follow-up
compliance reviews on crashes.
One of the things we demand is that when we have a
significant crash, whether it is a personal injury or
fatalities, we ask our Federal colleagues or our DOT colleagues
in Minnesota to conduct a follow-up compliance review to
determine what type of philosophy that motor carrier is
operating. Did they contribute to that crash with a poor safety
philosophy or was it strictly related to some driver decisions?
We are trying to send a message to the motor carrier
industry in our State that if you are involved in one of these
things, you will go under the microscope. We have had a great
deal of success with our driver focused program.
We have instituted a fatigue detection program, and
subsequently our driver out of service rate has doubled. We
went from approximately 8 percent to 16 percent out of service
on drivers.
The industry is responding. I left Minnesota this morning,
and in the paper yesterday was an article about a large carrier
from a neighboring State that employs 15,000 drivers. Of the
15,000 drivers, they identified 10 percent of them are dealing
with sleep apnea. What was the carrier doing about it? They got
proactive, and they are assisting those drivers with getting
treatment.
Now we are going to see drivers with sleep apnea machines
in their sleepers, but we all know that sleep apnea is just one
of the issues these drivers deal with when it comes to fatigue,
and we all know that drivers can log legitimately and still be
fatigued. It is all based on their lifestyle. So we have
implemented this program, and we believe that we have had great
successes by removing some of these at-risk drivers.
As far as our compliance reviews, we perform a significant
number of compliance reviews in Minnesota. Of the State
partners that have State personnel inputting those reviews to
the Federal system, we are one of the leaders in that area.
We feel it is very important to touch the industry on
multiple levels again and again, and we do this not only with
the implementation of the U.S. DOT number but also with our
annual inspection program, when we recertify their maintenance
personnel through compliance reviews, through our required
inspections and audits on all passenger carriers, school bus
operators and limo operators.
Basically, in a nutshell, Members, I have given you what
Minnesota is doing as of today, and we feel that we are on the
right track to reducing crashes. Thank you for this opportunity
to visit with you today.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Captain.
Mrs. Napolitano had wanted to introduce the chief, and I
had neglected to let her do that and also she wanted to make a
brief opening statement. So, at this point, I am going to
recognize her to go first with questions.
Mrs. Napolitano.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It really wasn't
necessary, but I thank you for the opportunity.
Number one, thank you for the hearing because I think this
is something that is in the mind of many citizens throughout
the United States about the safety on the roads. Truck traffic
certainly, especially in California, in my area is just 25,000
trucks a day on I-5 and 47,000 trucks on one of the other
freeways in my district, and these are expected to double by
2015. So it is an issue that is of great concern, not only to
my constituency but to the rest of the Nation.
I certainly want to give a warm welcome to Mr. Vaughn and
regards to Commissioner Brown. We go back many years since I
sat on Transportation in California, overlooking the use of
tandem trailers and safety on the California highways. They do
an excellent job, and I am so happy that you are here, sir, to
share with us the experiences of the highway patrol, what I
consider to be the preeminent law enforcement agency at least
in California.
With that, thank you, Mr. Chair. I have questions, but I
will wait my turn. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Now, Administrator Hill, did I read that your Agency did
40,000 new entrant reviews last year?
Mr. Hill. You read that there were 40,000 done, but we did
not do them all ourselves. The States did the vast majority of
the new entrant audits, sir.
Mr. Duncan. Oh, I see. But you have increased your
compliance reviews by a third?
Mr. Hill. Yes, we have significantly increased our
compliance reviews since 2004. We have increased it, I think,
about 30, 34, 40 percent since that time. So we are making
gains, and one of the things I am pleased about is the States
are much more involved in the compliance review process.
When MCSAP, the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program,
began in the eighties, it was fashioned primarily as a roadside
inspection program, and so most of the resources that were
given to the States allowed them to build an infrastructure
that would do inspections. But States like Minnesota and
California have been very proactive to start getting into the
compliance review arena, and so I am pleased that the States
also have expanded.
Mr. Duncan. You heard Inspector General Scovel say that he
thinks you are working with the States to try to get more
information about non-fatal crashes. Is that correct and are
you close to achieving that goal?
Are you receiving a lot of information from some States and
no information from other States or what is the situation
there?
Mr. Hill. Okay. Data quality and completeness is a very
important issues, and I would answer you a couple ways.
First of all, on the 2004 review SafeStat, I think the
Inspector General at that time encouraged us to increase our
attention with data sufficiency. Since that report was issued
in 2004, we have seen the number of large truck related crashes
improve 32 percent. It went from about 100 and I think 7,000 up
to 144,000. So we are pleased with the amount of improvement
that has been made.
The problem is we still have pockets of the Country that we
have not been able to see that kind of data improvement. What
we are doing internally is trying to develop programs to
augment that. For example, States are not eligible to use some
of their high priority funding for related activities in the
MCSAP program unless they first use that money to address data
quality. So we are using MCSAP data to address it.
Then secondly, we also have created some measurement tools
that allow the States to have a pictorial view through a map--
green, yellow and red--and determine how they are meeting data
sufficiency.
Then back to your original question about the non-fatal
crashes, this is the next arena that we need to move into
because we have not seen the kind of non-fatal crash data
improvements that we would like. That is the next frontier for
us, and we are going to retool our measurement system beginning
later this year. We have got the States now, about 41 of them,
are green. So now we are going to probably see that degrade a
little bit because of the non-fatal crashes.
I would say to you that the congress has been giving grants
to us through the Motor Carrier Safety Assistant Program to the
tune of $3 million this year in SAFETEA-LU, and we had $6
million of requests for those kinds of grants. There is a lot
of interest in the States. We are trying to get the money out
to them, so they can change their reporting systems.
Mr. Duncan. I know that you also heard Inspector General
Scovel say that we basically had reached a flatlined level and
that it was going to be very difficult to get much more of a
decrease or much more of an improvement in the fatality rate.
Do you agree with that?
In a way, it is saying that you are doing a really good
job. In another way, it is saying there is not much room for
improvement. What do you say about that?
Mr. Hill. Well, it is a fair question, and it is what we
are here for. We are supposed to be seeing the numbers go down,
not just plateau. I would say to you a couple things.
First of all, one of the concerns that I have is that we
still have about 46 percent of the trucking population out
there that don't use safety belts, and so we have been trying
to work with that. If we could save 300 and some lives every
year of truckers not losing using their lives just by clicking
their safety belt. So we are trying to move that agenda
forward.
I would say to you that I really believe that the future of
large reductions in fatalities involving commercial vehicles
are going to be technology system that Chief Vaughn referred to
in his opening statement. I think as we see more vehicles
equipped with devices that give the driver additional help in
alerting them to upcoming traffic or to not deviate from their
departure of their lane, I think we are going to see real
reductions in crashes and fatalities. I would like to see some
kind of discussion, meaningful discussion about incentives that
would encourage companies to want to do that.
Mr. Duncan. All right, thank you very much.
I will come to other questions later. Go ahead, Mr. Chair.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Duncan.
The GAO found that 38 percent of the carriers, I believe,
(768 of 1,996) were subject to an out-of-service order in 2005
and 2006 and were found at roadside inspection to be out of
compliance with an out-of-service order or were involved in a
crash. Yet, FMCSA only cited 26 of the 768.
I guess my question would be if someone has an out-of-
service order and they are found at a roadside inspection or
cause a crash, why were such a minuscule percentage of them
fined? It doesn't seem like a big deterrent to me, and it seems
like a license to ignore an out-of-service order.
Mr. Administrator.
Mr. Hill. Mr. Chairman, I would say a couple of things in
response to that.
First of all, there is a mechanism for States to place a
driver and a vehicle out of service at the roadside independent
of us doing it through a compliance review. I don't know if the
GAO study really addressed the roadside out of service issue or
not.
But in terms of ours, we certainly take action when we
determine that it has occurred but verifying that that is
happening is a very labor intensive process. For example, when
we find that a carrier has been having inspection activity
after they have been placed out of service, we have just begun
here in the last two years to start citing those people for
violating their out of service order.
So we are starting to infuse this into our enforcement
process, but in the past it was simply whenever we went in and
did a compliance review did we find that occurring with the
carriers that we were addressing and we did not.
Mr. DeFazio. Do you have any kind of a real time system so
that your inspectors can input into a computer and find out
that that carrier is out-of-service?
Mr. Hill. Yes.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. Now if they find that, on the spot, I
would assume they would probably do two things: impound the
truck and fine them because the truck, it seems to me, would be
not safe to continue since they are out of service.
Mr. Hill. If the carrier is out of service, the vehicle
cannot be moved until that is remedied and that is done at the
roadside and that is a process that occurs consistently
throughout this Country. I believe that the amount of penalty
they are subject to is $10,000 for doing that.
Mr. DeFazio. Basically, the GAO numbers of 2005 and 2006
don't reflect the fact that in 2006 and 2007 that this has been
a much more active enforcement against out-of-service companies
when found to be out of service.
Mr. Hill. We are beginning to address that much more
rigorously as a result of the work that we are doing with the
GAO and Inspector General.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. Does the GAO have any comment on that?
Ms. Fleming. We haven't looked at the 2006, 2007 numbers.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, all right.
Another concern that was raised which I find of great
concern, I believe this was raised by the NTSB, was the issue
of what criteria would cause someone to become unsatisfactory.
I guess the question is here, and I direct it first to NTSB and
then ask Administrator Hill to comment, but I would agree with
the NTSB who has a most wanted safety improvement saying if
either a vehicle or a driver is in serious noncompliance, that
that should result in an unsatisfactory rating.
It seems to me that, gee, we have got some really great
drivers driving really unsafe vehicles or we have got some
really substandard drivers driving really spiffy new trucks.
Neither of those should be rated, it seems to me, either
conditional or satisfactory. Would you comment on that, Ms.
Hersman?
Ms. Hersman. Yes, Mr. Chairman. You have stated it well. On
our most wanted list, we have had a recommendation that we
issued in 1999, and it is in an unacceptable status. We believe
that drivers and vehicles are the best indicators of how a
company is going to perform.
We have looked at numerous accidents including the recent
Wilmer, Texas accident involving the bus operator. In that
situation, we had a driver who had been pulled over for three
roadside inspections. In two of those, he was placed out of
service for hours of service violations.
We have had companies that we have looked at that were
involved in accidents. For example, in Indianapolis, a motor
coach operator, Hammond Yellow Coach, was inspected nine times
in the eight years prior to their fatal accident. Their post-
accident compliance review revealed that 10 out of 10 of the
vehicles reviewed were out of service. They were still given a
conditional rating.
Mr. DeFazio. Also, perhaps for another question later, but
the whole issue of when one is moved from unsatisfactory to
conditional, what sort of oversight is conducted?
Anybody else want to comment on this before I turn to the
Administrator for his response? Does anybody else have feelings
about the fact that if either there are significant driver
problems or vehicle problems, that that should result in an
unsatisfactory rating as opposed to having to have both?
Okay, Administrator Hill. I am going to say that their
silence means that they all agree with me, so you know.
Mr. Hill. Well, you certainly have that prerogative, Mr.
Chairman. I understand.
I would just say to you that is one of the reasons why, in
my opening statement, we are trying to deal with the NTSB
recommendations through the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010.
Mr. DeFazio. Let me just interrupt for a moment. But they
also recommended, given the fact that there are questions about
whether you will make 2010 and even if you made 2010, they are
saying perhaps, in fact, I don't think they said perhaps; they
said there should be an interim rule addressing specifically
this question. Wasn't that correct, Ms. Hersman?
Ms. Hersman. We would actually love for them to address
this, but in addition we ask them to look at all violations,
not just the acute or critical as well. This recommendation has
been outstanding on the drivers and vehicles since 1999. We
feel that even if they accomplish their goal, which we think is
ambitious for 2010, it is still 11 years after we made our
recommendation.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, Mr. Administrator.
Mr. Hill. Okay. We believe that CSA 2010 will take that
into account. What it will do is allow for violations to be
determining the fitness status of a motor carrier as opposed to
what we are doing now through a compliance review. Because we
will be doing monthly runs of the available data, we will be
able to determine the fitness status in a carrier monthly as
opposed to having to wait and do an onsite review.
The second thing I would say to you is that if you start
adding infusing all of the violations in our current system, it
is going to exacerbate the number of AB carriers and it is
going to make it extremely difficult for us, for the resources
that we have in place to get through all those carriers. Then
you are going to be calling me up and asking me, well, why
aren't you getting all the AB carriers?
What you are going to be doing is adding several what I
would consider violations that certainly are serious but may
not point to the crash problem that GAO is pointing out in some
of their work where they want us to focus on the crash data in
SafeStat as opposed to just all these other violations. So I
have got to walk between both recommendations, focusing on all
violations and focusing on serious crash data as well because
generally we think that the crash data contributes most to the
future prediction of what is going to happen.
Mr. DeFazio. I understand the GAO's position on the
algorithms or whatever it was they want to develop, as I was
falling asleep reading it on the airplane. It is very
important, but I was having a little trouble. It must take
special writing classes to work at GAO, but the information is
there if you can stay awake through it.
It just seems to me though, and it is kind of a common
sense point that I think NTSB is making here. I don't know
whether GAO would even disagree with that. They want to use the
crash data as an indicator, but if either the trucks or the
drivers aren't safe, it seems to me those are two pretty darn
critical factors.
I don't know if there is anybody up there who wants to
disagree with that. I mean having one or the other, either
people who have repeated violations and/or suspended licenses
and are still operating or having trucks that have been found
to be unsafe to operate, either of those seem to be pretty darn
critical.
Would GAO, even though you want to look at the crash data
and analyze backwards from that, is there any disagreement with
that common sense approach which is not quite as scientific as
yours?
Ms. Fleming. Compliance with safety regulations basically
helps predict future crash risk. We just found that past
crashes are a stronger predictor of future crashes than
compliance with the safety violations.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. I think they made a movie about this
where the policemen arrested people before they committed
crimes, and I can't remember the name of it.
Mr. Administrator, if you were to go back and apply this to
a couple, the Beltway crash here, the bus crash in Texas, you
would say, gee, those companies should have been and in fact I
believe at least one of them was a number of times
unsatisfactory because of these problems.
Mr. Hill. Mr. Chairman, I agree with you.
Here is my dilemma. If we implement an interim final rule
right now and change the system, it is going to create quite a
bit of disruption, I think, in the way that we do this with the
industry.
I am trying to focus on getting the CSA 2010 done because I
don't really want to be judged on not getting it done. I want
to be judged because I think we are going to get it done. We
have met every time line internally. We are on budget. We are
moving forward. We are going to pilot test this next year in
four States.
So we are committed to getting this safety fitness
determination remedied as the NTSB wants it done. I just think
we need to do it in a very open manner.
Mr. DeFazio. My last question, because I am over my time:
Can you move to full implementation, without legislative
changes, to the CSA 2010?
Mr. Hill. We believe that we can.
Mr. DeFazio. That sounds a little tentative.
Mr. Hill. Well, no. Here is what I want. We believe we can,
but we are also in the process of developing three rules. We
don't believe we can with our current regulatory scheme. We do
believe we can statutorily.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay.
I guess I didn't get the order on your side. Who was here
first?
Mr. Poe was here first. Okay, Mr. Poe.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have some questions, a lot of them. I will try to get
through as many of them as I can.
On March 29th, 2006, 26 girls from Beaumont West Brook High
School in my Congressional district were riding a coach, a
motor coach, to the Texas State Soccer Playoffs, and the bus
flipped over on its side, killed two of them. Most of the
others were injured. Some of them lost their limbs. I met with
those parents yesterday in my office to discuss safety of
school kids on buses.
I, like any parent, always assumed coach, a motor coach,
was safer than an old-fashioned yellow school bus. It turns out
that is not true. School buses are safer than motor coaches
because of the way they are built with these massive windows
that break and kids go flying out which is what happened with
these soccer players.
My concern is two-fold. One, what is being done, if
anything, to implement lap seatbelts on school buses or buses
period that transport school kids, not just the yellow school
buses but motor coaches?
Texas actually has passed a law now that school buses that
transport kids are going to have to have lapbelts for 2010, I
think. So I would like to know if we are moving in that
direction.
I have heard all the arguments. It costs too much and all
of that, $6,000 a school bus to implement these belts. But when
you start transporting kids, I think their safety is paramount
to the cost and if there is anything on the national movement
that is being done to implement this.
Then I have a question or comment about the bus that was
transporting more people from my district during the Rita
situation that caught fire and people burned to death on the
bus because they couldn't get off. The driver was illegally in
the Country, and the bus didn't pass any inspections. So we
will get to that question second.
Who wants to weigh in on the seatbelts or lapbelts as they
are called?
Mr. Hill. Well, I will start, and they can fill in.
Mr. Poe. I will start picking on you if you don't
volunteer.
Mr. Hill. I would just say to you that there has been a
considerable amount of discussion about this. The manufacturing
standards dealing with safety belts in commercial vehicles are
handled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
I know that they are currently looking at several different
related recommendations as a result of the Wilmer incident that
Ms. Hersman referred to in her opening statement.
Secondly, from our perspective in the Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, we enforce the operational regulation. Our role
would be consultive and not to be prescriptive.
Mr. Poe. Do you have an opinion? Yes or no, do you think
they ought to be on motor coaches?
Mr. Hill. No, I don't have an opinion at this point. I
would have to look at some of the data.
Ms. Hersman. Congressman Poe, I will jump in here. I
actually this morning spoke at a summit that NHTSA is holding
on seatbelts on school buses, and the Safety Board has taken a
position regarding occupant protection both in school buses as
well as motor coaches. These issues are on our most wanted
list.
The motor coach issues deal with keeping passengers inside
the vehicle, addressing the windows, roof crush strength and
redesign of the passenger seating compartment to restrain
passengers.
With respect to school buses, the Safety Board has launched
on a number of school bus accidents. We have quite a bit of
information about those investigations. Last November, we
elevated to our most wanted list a recommendation to NHTSA to
redesign the passenger seating compartment for school buses in
an effort to try to make them safer. School buses are very
safe, but any fatality is one too many when it comes to the
children that we transport.
Mr. Poe. In the redesigning of the school bus, are you
talking about using these lapbelts? Is that what you are
talking about or something else?
Ms. Hersman. No. The Safety Board is not prescriptive with
respect to the type of restraint or occupant protection
standard that might exist.
As you are very familiar with--it sounds like you have
focused on this issue--compartmentalization is the current
passive form of restraint on school buses. The Safety Board has
recommended that they look at occupant protection, potentially
a redesign of the entire seating compartment.
There were presentations today at the safety summit about
seatbelts, but we think that there are a number of issues
including sides of the buses, the roof, coming in contact with
other children, the sides of seats. All of these materials are
not designed to absorb impact energy in a lateral crash or a
rollover. We think that they need to look at the entire system.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
We are going to have to recess. They have called a series
of votes. Unfortunately, because of the way they have set it
up, there is going to be a motion to recommit, a couple of 15
minute votes. It is going to take 50 minutes, 50, and as soon
as possible we will return.
I hope all the members of the panel can stay. I have had a
number of people including the Chairman express very strong
interest in having a round of questions. So if you absolutely
have to go, we might understand anyway.
With that, the Committee stands in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. DeFazio. Thanks for your tolerance of our ways around
here on the schedule. It seems we could condense some of that.
But, in any case, I have a few more questions, and I know other
Members will be arriving shortly and they do. We wanted to make
the best of your time that we could.
Oh, I see Mrs. Napolitano, and she hasn't had her turn yet.
So I will turn to you, Mrs. Napolitano. Thanks. I was just
going to fill up the time, hopefully productively.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
Mr. DeFazio. But you are recognized.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was unavoidably
detained speaking to highway patrol, one of our guests.
Mr. Scovel, listening with great intent, the number of
accidents that you say that are happening, what are the major
causes?
We know fatigue. We know the training. We know the truck
maintenance, all of that. What is the major issue and how can
we address it?
How can we without adding more laws? There are already
enough laws on the book.
Is it personnel? What is it that we need to be able to
address what everybody has identified is an issue?
Mr. Scovel. Thank you, Mrs. Napolitano.
Based on the work that my office has done both on the
investigation side and on the program audit side, we believe a
prime focus should be on the driver. We concur with NTSB that
certainly a significant concern is with the vehicle and vehicle
maintenance and integrity, but for us our attention has been
focused on the driver.
When we talk about the improvements that FMCSA and the
Department and the industry and our State partners have made in
driving down fatality rates and fatality numbers and the fact
that we may now have seen that curve bottom out, we look to see
where improvements may still be achieved. We think by focusing
on human factors.
You mentioned fatigue. Inattention, speeding, use of
illegal drugs or alcohol, those are all areas where we should
focus as well as technology, electronic on-board recorders and
perhaps collision avoidance systems should also, well, we
believe they must be implemented as well and industry-wide to
the extent possible.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, Ms. Hersman had indicated that 30
years ago, it was recommended that tamper-proof safety logging
design be used. Is that something that might help be able to
reduce fatigue, the driver malfunction, if you will?
Mr. Scovel. I think she was referring to tamper-proof
electronic on-board recorders.
Mrs. Napolitano. Right.
Mr. Scovel. Which would help us in terms of documenting
hours of service and preventing falsification of logbook
entries. In my notes today, I have half a dozen large truck
fatality cases that my office has recently worked or that are
still open, and a consistent theme in every one is hours of
service violations coupled with false logbook entries.
Mrs. Napolitano. Mr. Vaughn, not too long ago, California
had a problem with a truck that missed a turn somewhere in
California and burnt down a whole segment of a freeway. Could
you tell me what the findings were in relation to the driver?
Was it the design? Was it driver fatigue? What did you find
or can you talk about it?
Chief Vaughn. That investigation is still continuing at
this time. What I can say about that was the driver had a very
clean driving record. He had no citations or accidents on his
record.
At the time of the accident, we had GPS that we were able
to go back and look at. He was maintaining a speed of 62 miles
per hour which is greater than the speed limit for commercial
vehicles--they are 55--but it is not an excessive speed by any
means at that time in the morning with traffic out on the
roadway.
We found that the driver did take an action, a turning
movement to move into a traffic lane, went a little bit further
than he intended, shifted back to the left, and it was at that
point, we believe, that the fuel shifted, causing the vehicle
to go onto its side.
That is not a final. That is a preliminary. The final
investigation will be completed here shortly.
Mrs. Napolitano. So, in essence, it could have been the
shift of not just cargo but the fuel itself.
Chief Vaughn. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
Ms. Fleming, you indicated the statistical approach has
been helpful in being able to bring down the number of
fatalities. Are the fines not enough to be able to get some of
these folks to understand how serious it is that they put not
only their own lives in jeopardy but others?
Ms. Fleming. I think it is a function largely of the nature
of the commercial trucking industry. You have millions of
drivers, hundreds of thousands of carriers out there, and FMCSA
basically can only conduct a small percentage of compliance
reviews on an annual basis.
So what they really have to do and what we recommend is
that they have to look for the most effective means to target
their resources. What we have found with our statistical
approach as well as an alternative enhancement is that past
crashes are the best predictor of future crashes, and so we
believe that targeting those very scarce resources both at the
State and Federal levels in that regard is likely to result in
more compliance with safety and better or I should say less
accidents.
Mrs. Napolitano. Do you have enough support system and
infrastructure personnel to be able to do follow up on those?
Ms. Fleming. You mean in terms of FMCSA? Again, I think it
is because they have only have a small set of resources, and so
it is very important for them to target those resources.
It is promising that with CSA 2010, their initiative, they
are looking for ways to, if you will, get the biggest bang for
their buck. We think that is a promising step, so that they can
get a better sense and touch most unsafe drivers and carriers,
and they are looking for ways to more effectively do that.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will wait for the next round.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you.
Mr. Platts.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your
chairing this hearing and all the witnesses' testimony.
I apologize with not being here earlier as many of my
colleagues, having to be in several different spots at once.
I have a question to Administrator Hill, and it is a
follow-up to a conversation we had earlier this year that
relates to motor carrier safety and not necessarily high risk
as directly focused here but the general issue of safety, and
that is the CDL licensing process.
When we talked back in March, the Agency was looking at the
revisions to the CDL requirements with the thought that perhaps
late spring or early summer, we would see a proposed rule on
new regulations that would, in my word, toughen the
requirements and strengthen the requirements to ensure that our
drivers out there of the heavy trucks are well qualified and
well trained.
Can you just give me an update of where we stand on that
issue with those proposed new regulations?
Mr. Hill. Yes, Congressman Platts. I believe that when we
had our conversation, you were talking specifically about two
issues, if I remember correctly, the merger of the medical
piece to the CDL process. We did issue a notice of proposed
rulemaking concerning merging those two items together which is
something that we haven't had in the past.
Right now, if a driver has a medical qualification, he is
required to have that every two years. That is done separately
than the licensing process. So that will merge that.
The other thing that we talked about, I think, was the
driver training.
Mr. Platts. Right, right.
Mr. Hill. We are in the process of finalizing that. In
fact, I believe it has just cleared within the Department. We
will be sending that to OMB for a notice of proposed of
rulemaking and once they get done with the review, there should
be a notice of proposed rulemaking out very shortly on the
training of entry level drivers.
Mr. Platts. Right, the primary focus is the training of
that entry level driver.
Mr. Hill. That is correct.
Mr. Platts. With that going to OMB, is there a time frame?
I know it is out of your control when it goes to OMB, but do
you have an estimate?
Mr. Hill. Well, generally, they take the 90 days to review
a proposed rule. I am hoping that later this year we can have
that on the streets and get it open for the public to comment
on. We believe. There has already been testimony today, and I
believe that the industry is very interested in this issue.
I am excited about seeing how they respond to the proposed
rule in light of how the court admonished us to take into
consideration certain factors that were not in the previous
rule.
Mr. Platts. As far as your sending it over, would that be
before the end of this month that it will go to OMB?
Mr. Hill. I believe that is an accurate statement. Could I
get back to you faithfully on that?
Mr. Platts. Yes.
Mr. Hill. I would like to check with somebody in the
Department to make sure, but I was told verbally yesterday that
it had cleared the Department and will be going to OMB.
Mr. Platts. Okay. I appreciate that. I think it ties into
the better job we do up front with that entry level driver and
the training, then that ultimately addresses the broader issue
here of high-risk carriers and their ability from the get-go
that they then build on. I think it is important that we move
forward certainly in a responsible but as expedited as possible
process as we can.
Mr. Hill. Congressman, I would just say to you that in
addition to that, later this year we are hoping to have a
notice of proposed rulemaking out that will deal with the
commercial driver's license learner permit process, which is
also going to be very important because it incorporates some of
the requirements from the SAFE Port Act for trucking that was
passed in 2006 that specifically talked about the three
recommendations that the Inspector General made to us about CDL
fraud and addressing fraudulent activity.
We are going to build that into that rule as well. We think
that these two rules will strengthen the entry level piece of
the commercial driver's license process.
Mr. Platts. You or your staff, when they follow up with the
specifics on the time frame, if they could also provide
additional information on that aspect of the second proposed
rule, that would be great.
Mr. Hill. Okay. You are welcome, sir.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Administrator.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman.
For Inspector General Scovel, the question is about crash
data and my understanding is that you have reported on problems
with the reporting by the various States to the Feds. Now GAO
is recommending that we put greater weight on crash data. I
guess I would like both of you to respond to that.
It seems to me, first, we need to be assured that we are
getting the most accurate, up to date and timely crash data if
we were looking at that sort of a change. What are we doing to
remedy this problem with the States, Mr. Scovel?
Mr. Scovel. Thank you. I would agree with you that it ought
to be a stepped process. It would seem to me to be most
advantageous if data quality were to be maximized to the
greatest extent possible and then weighted appropriately to
reflect the degree to which accident information is a predictor
of future accidents and safety problems.
If it were to be the other way around, I think we would be
magnifying the impact of incorrect data which certainly would
be to the detriment of the industry, to the traveling public
and to FMCSA certainly eventually.
Our focus has been specifically on the quality of non-fatal
crash data.
Administrator Hill has talked about the State safety data
quality map which right now looks pretty good. It is important
for the Committee to note that the data that is represented on
that map that has been provided by the States specifically
regarding crashes pertains only to fatal crashes. It doesn't
yet reflect non-fatal crash data. Non-fatal crash data is
important because it is a determinant of what motor carriers
will undergo compliance reviews.
We believe what is needed and we have recommended to FMCSA
that they follow up and it is currently an effort that is
underway to undertake a data quality study by the University of
Michigan Transportation Research Institute, determine what the
quality of data submitted by the States has been. We are
informed that FMCSA proposes to complete that by the end of
2008. Based on that, clearly there are initiatives that can be
undertaken in connection with CSA 2010.
But, in the meantime, a kind of back to basics approach
would also be helpful, we believe, and that means working with
State officials to improve the training that they provide to
their people in the field when they are reporting crashes and
also simply by looking at the forms that the States use in
reporting this information to FMCSA. All of those, we think,
would be helpful in improving the data quality that is so
important in terms of determining which carriers will undergo
compliance reviews.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. Ms. Fleming, do you share some of those
concerns about the quality of the data?
Ms. Fleming. Yes, sir, we do. Our results pretty much
mirror the DOT's results, the IG's results. We found problems
with the timeliness, the accuracy and completeness of the data.
In terms of how we were using the data, which again was to
try to identify the high crash carriers we found that late
reported crashes had minor effects to the SafeStat model as
well as a regression approach.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. Another point I believe you raised, Mr.
Scovel, was you mentioned something about compliance reviews
looking at all drivers, I believe. Did you not?
Mr. Scovel. Yes, Mr. DeFazio, we did. We made that
recommendation--I should offer this caveat--based not on a
full-scale audit but based on our observations of the BK
Trucking accident case this past March here in the Washington,
D.C. area.
Mr. DeFazio. I am not that familiar with this kind of
contract status or owner-operator status that the person
involved had and how that company related to them. Is this
legitimate arms-length contracting or is this something like we
find in some other areas of industry where essentially you are
kind of complying, trying to beat IRS rules here and determine
who is contracting, who isn't?
For instance, all the cab drivers in New York are
contractors, but they go and get the cabs from the same place
every day. Is it something like that we are looking at here?
Mr. Scovel. Regrettably, it may be. I confess that my
office hasn't done an in-depth study. We don't know the extent
of the problem in the industry, but we think it is worthy of
FMCSA's attention that their inspectors, first of all, get some
guidance, some detailed guidance as best we can prepare it on
delving into the relationship between drivers and a company
undergoing a compliance review.
Right now, FMCSA's process is that company drivers, that
is, company employees only are subject to commercial driver
license checks. The loophole, as we have identified it, is that
companies undergoing compliance reviews, if they have bona fide
contractors or if as you say it is more of a subterfuge, then
they know that under current FMCSA process, those contractors,
independent owner-operators aren't subject to license checks.
That is specifically what happened in the BK Trucking case.
Compliance review completed in February. Accident, tragic
accident with fatality in March. Driver surfaced in the
February review but didn't undergo a license check because he
was listed by the company as an independent owner-operator.
Mr. DeFazio. Now what do you mean surfaced, meaning the
company has to list all of their company drivers and their
contract drivers at the time of the compliance review?
Mr. Scovel. Correct.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay, so the name was known.
Mr. Scovel. The name was known. He was known to be a driver
for this company.
Mr. DeFazio. So why, Administrator Hill, wouldn't we, if we
knew that someone was contracting with someone who has such a
bad driving record, somehow take that into account?
Mr. Hill. I think that is the important point to start
with. First of all, when our safety investigator went in, they
have to establish a relationship that there is in fact an
owner-operator. What we found was the investigator went into
the company owner, and the owner said those people don't work
for me. They are independent operators.
We said, well, they are showing up on the profile. We
looked at the lease agreements, and that was our flaw. We did
not have the kind of detailed assessment of that lease
agreement that really bound them together in that contractual
relationship.
As a result of that, we are now instituting training all
across the Country for all of our safety investigators to
better understand leases which is a part of the legacy of the
old ICC that we really didn't follow through on as well when we
moved into the safety environment.
The second thing that we have done as a result of the BK
Trucking issue is that we sample now. Any company with 20
drivers or less, we are going to run CDLIS list checks or
commercial driver's license checks on all of those drivers,
period. What happened also is that in this case, this driver
might not have been a part of our sampling protocol because we
had such a small sample.
We are just saying, look, 20 drivers or less, we are going
to run all of them on the CDLIS check. We are not going to mess
around with this.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. If there were more than 20, why wouldn't
you run them all through that checklist?
Mr. Hill. Based upon our data and the MCMIS file, 90
percent of the carriers have 10 trucks or less, and so it is a
function of workload frankly. I mean if you go into Schneider
and you have 1,500 drivers, it is going to be a little tough to
do all their drivers.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. We know about problems with drivers
that come to the attention of Federal inspectors, but what
about the State data? As with the accident reporting, is it
incomplete in terms of violations and suspensions within
States?
I mean is there a good national clearinghouse where any and
all the States report any and all violations by any and all
commercial drivers within their States, and you have a
centralized record that your folks can refer to?
Mr. Hill. There are two ways, and I would also certainly
welcome the other two participants to communicate on this.
Violations are recorded through our Motor Carrier
Management Information System which is a compendium of all
inspections done in the Country, and they have access to that
at the roadside. That is assuming they have connectivity and
can access it. So they have access to all the commercial
vehicle violations on an inspection report.
The second piece is if a driver is convicted of an offense,
that goes to their CDL record, and so violations to the driving
record are available through another program called CDLIS which
is the driver, and all States can access that as well.
Mr. DeFazio. All States are required to report to it.
Mr. Hill. That is correct.
Mr. DeFazio. Are they generally faithfully reporting on a
timely basis?
Mr. Hill. We do compliance reviews. That is a different
term now.
We go in and do a review of States on their CDL compliance
with these issues, and we have found some problems. But it is
getting much better because MCSIA when it was passed, it
required States to do that. We have found several States to be
in what we would consider substantial non-compliance which
means they were in jeopardy of losing highway funding, not just
MCSAP funding, and they rallied around the pole and became
compliant.
We are seeing improvement in that area, but it is still
something that we are watching during a compliance review
process. We do 15 States a year in that review process. So
every three years, a State gets reviewed.
Mr. DeFazio. Anybody else on the panel have any thoughts on
the drivers, driver's licenses, or reporting offenses?
Mr. Urquhart. Mr. Chairman?
Mr. DeFazio. Yes.
Mr. Urquhart. Since we have adopted the matrix on critical
violations that impact a commercial driver's license holder's
record, we have seen an increase in our State of masking and
deferring, and generally that comes from our court system.
Those drivers convince the court that there is a livelihood
issue there, and so the reporting is interrupted well before it
gets to the Department.
Just to add to this discussion, aside from CDLIS, we are
still dealing with commercial operators that aren't required to
have commercial driver's licenses when they operate vehicles
above 10,000. What we do see in our State from time to time is
local law enforcement doesn't recognize what a commercial
vehicle really is in accordance with the definition.
So we do miss some of those things, and it is an
educational thing both on the side of the courts and also with
local law enforcement.
Mr. DeFazio. To Mr. Vaughn, in California, you actually go
out to each of the sites of the trucking companies and do on-
site inspections. I am curious_there is probably no way we
could do it here, but I was looking at your roadside out-of-
service rates comparable to the Federal statistic.
Then I am trying to figure out, well, if they are actually
going to the sites, has that diminished the number of trucks
that are found out of service that are California-registered or
California-based versus those that are transiting your State?
Is the fact that you have a comparable number due more to the
transiting trucks or is there the same percentage of trucks
that are domiciled in the State?
Do you know what I am getting at? I am trying to figure
since FMCSA doesn't come anywhere near that and you are doing
it, I am wondering if it has any sort of preventive effect.
Chief Vaughn. We believe that it does, but again we would
have to go back and look at that statistically.
Mr. DeFazio. We would have to do a regression analysis on
it or something.
Chief Vaughn. Yes. What we do know is we do not do
compliance reviews in California. We do the BITs as you
indicated, and we are out there once every 25 months. There are
approximately 1.3 million vehicles that are registered in
California and 1.8 that can pass through from out of the State.
To determine that, we would have to go back and back some
runs, but we can do that because that is an interesting point.
Mr. DeFazio. Yes, I am just wondering if we can show that
it has an impact. Then we would perhaps want to incent other
States to do that somehow and help deal with it because I find
it disturbing when you find that large of a percentage of
trucks that until the moment they were stopped and looked at,
they had a potential for a defect. It just seems like a high
number.
If I could just go back to the Administrator, a question
about the BK issue that is not clear in anything I have
received. It was in and out of compliance: it was rated
unsatisfactory; it was conditional. it was satisfactory a
number of times over a number of years. But then as soon as the
fatal accident occurred, inspectors returned and they were then
out of service.
I am just curious. I mean, I am disturbed about that
because it seems almost to represent what those of us who are
familiar with the FAA have called the tombstone mentality which
is we get there after the fact and we begin to apply extra
scrutiny that wasn't applied before the fact. The unfortunate
thing is someone died in the interim.
Can you address that issue with that company: How someone
moves back and forth so much; what sort of scrutiny or
additional scrutiny is put on the conditional folks; how it was
that they had a relatively recent inspection and they were not
put out of service but then as soon as the fatal happened, they
were put out of service?
Mr. Hill. Okay. First of all, I would just say that when a
carrier is rated as unsatisfactory, we are required then to put
them out of service within 61 days if they are a freight
carrier or 45 if they are hauling passengers or hazardous
material.
Therefore, the company has significant impetus to want to
get that remedied. They are going to be very responsive to the
requirements that we put on them because they know that they
can't make any money and generate revenue while they are out of
business. So they are going to be responsive.
Then once they get into, as you just described, the
conditional mode, then we put them into a categorization that
we have, a group of people dedicated to do conditional carrier
reviews. Frankly, Mr. Chairman, they are competing for the
workload of those SafeStat A and B carriers that we are also
required to do which you have read in the GAO report and other
things as well.
Let me address specifically the BK trucking and why that
happened the way it did. When our investigators went in, in
April, the owner of the company withheld information and said
the owner-operators are not representative or a group, and
therefore their data was not considered as a part of our safety
assessment of that company. When we went back in and included
those owner-operators, there were problems that began to filter
into the process that were not in existence before.
Mr. DeFazio. Right, but your normal procedure would not,
for trucking companies of more than 20, include owner-
operators.
Mr. Hill. Yes.
Mr. DeFazio. It would not include them. You don't rate
them.
Mr. Hill. No, no. We rate anyone, anyone that we go in and
do a compliance review for, regardless.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, I thought that that was the issue here,
that because they were owner-operators, that person's name had
come to the attention of the inspector, but they said, okay,
well, we won't look at that person because they are an owner-
operator.
Mr. Hill. And so, the violations associated with those
owner-operators were not held against the carrier.
Mr. DeFazio. Right, but they weren't held by your policy
before the accident, but they were after.
Mr. Hill. That is because we established a relationship
during the subsequent interview, and a more in-depth analysis
of those lease agreements bound those two together which we did
not find in the first. I told you earlier that we identified it
as a deficiency.
Mr. DeFazio. So there is a policy change here.
Mr. Hill. It is really a training issue. I mean the policy
didn't change. It is just that our people should have detected
that lease arrangement and then made the motor carrier
responsible for those owner-operators which they did not do in
the first case.
Mr. DeFazio. Okay. Basically, when the company owns the
vehicles and is leasing them to someone, they would be now
considered part of that company's record. If it was
legitimately just a contractor, legitimate owner-operator,
someone who is truly independent, they wouldn't be considered.
Mr. Hill. That is correct. The owner-operator typically
moves. They are going to work for either themselves, the owner-
operators, or they are going to be working under someone else's
authority wherever they can get the loads. What typically
happens is they work in these relationships with the motor
carrier, and the motor carrier becomes responsible then for
that owner-operator's driving and operational activities.
Mr. DeFazio. They would then have an obligation. Do they
have access to the database to determine whether this person
has violations or suspensions elsewhere?
Mr. Hill. Before they ever bring them on in that
relationship, they are required to have a driver qualification
file and do a records check. They are supposed to establish
they have drug testing. They are supposed to monitor that
driver's performance, absolutely. They become responsible for
that driver.
Mr. DeFazio. In this case, the owner had knowledge of this
person's problems, but didn't take any action and allowed the
person to operate.
Mr. Hill. I would just say I don't believe that. They had
done a driver qualification check on that license before the
employer hired that owner-operator which they are required to
do once a year. But after the person has a suspended license,
the driver, the onus is on the driver to notify the employer or
the carrier, that they have had an action taken, and that is a
problem.
Mr. DeFazio. The once a year, I assume is this a relatively
routine inputting of the CDL number into a computer?
Mr. Hill. They are supposed to do it. Actually, you get a
motor vehicle check from the DMV.
Mr. DeFazio. Right, so I mean it isn't costly. It is not
particularly time-consuming.
Mr. Hill. No. He did that, but this suspension occurred
after he had done that initially.
Mr. DeFazio. Right, but that is because of the once a year.
Mr. Hill. That is correct.
Mr. DeFazio. What I am getting at is maybe we want to
require that this be done with more frequency rather than
depending upon the driver to self-report.
Mr. Hill. Well, I will tell you that we are working to try
to provide access to our system to the motor carriers that will
allow them to have much more ready access to driver
information. I am hoping that later this year we are going to
be able to explain to the industry how we are going to make
this information available to them.
We already have done it with law enforcement through
something called our Driver Information Resource, and we have
categorized all the driver violations. Instead of doing it by
carrier, we have done it by the driver. So now there is going
to be much more ready access, and we are going to try to roll
that out to the industry next year.
Mr. DeFazio. I would be very interested in that, and I
would want to encourage and help facilitate that in any way
possible. I think it would be very valuable information for the
industry to have. I mean there are a few bad apples out there,
and we want to get those off the road and not have them impugn
the rest of the industry and the rest of the drivers. That is
what we need to target.
If there are any problems moving that forward, I would be
very interested and I would like to help deal with that.
I have some questions about basically the limited ability
to pay issue, in the case of serious violations and how that
works. I mean, what we consider to be limited ability to pay.
Obviously, you don't want to take a true independent who has a
violation and put him out of business for that.
But where you have serious offenses, repeat offenses, how
much does this ability to pay weigh in? If someone is so
fragile that they can't pay a substantial fine for a serious
violation, then you have to question what other corners might
they be cutting.
Mr. Hill. As you have referred to, there are statutory
factors that we have to consider when we make fines make fines
and penalties. Based on that general guidance, several years
ago, the Agency drew up what they call the Uniform Fine
Assessment Program. I am going to tell you that I am not real
deep on this, but I will be glad to get with your staff and
provide them the information.
It is a factor. I don't think it would be characterized as
being as seriously flawed as maybe your question would
indicate, but it is a factor that we have to consider. What we
could do is we could show your staff how that plays out and how
that Uniform Fine Assessment works with all I think it is nine
statutory factors that we have to consider, and some of them
are subjective.
Mr. DeFazio. All right, okay. All right, I think, although
the staff may have an important question. Hold on one moment.
Well, Chairman Oberstar had hoped to get back but has been
unavoidably detained by other business, so he won't. He wanted
to express his regrets and again wanted to thank the Captain
because he wants to make sure that when he is going really fast
on his bicycle downhill sometime and you guys clock him, he
won't get in big trouble for it.
Does anybody else on the panel have something that they
weren't asked about that they really think would benefit the
Committee, open-ended?
Okay, all right. Well, with that, I again want to thank you
for your patience and your time and your expertise, and we all
hope to have a safer system in the future. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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