NAS Releases Its Compliance Safety Accountability System Report

HIGHLIGHTS:

• The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) may overhaul how it evaluates the safety of the carriers it regulates following the release of a new study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS).
• The NAS on June 27, 2017, released its 132-page report, which concluded that the SMS was conceptually sound and reasonable but needed to be improved. While complimentary of various ideas and efforts of the FMCSA, the report validated complaints of carriers that the SMS data was not consistent or reliable and stated that "there is a particular concern about false negatives and false positives among smaller carriers, which results from not having much data with which to judge them."