Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010

Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, otherwise known as CSA 2010, is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) safety program created to improve large truck and bus safety to ultimately reduce commercial vehicle related crashes, injuries and deaths. This new initiative introduces an innovative enforcement and compliance model that allows the FMCSA and its state partners to contact a larger number of carriers earlier in order to address safety issues before crashes happen. In developing CSA 2010, the FMCSA was determined to incorporate flexibility, efficiency, effectiveness, innovation, and equitability.

CSA 2010 reworks the existing enforcement and compliance business process to provide a better view into how well large commercial motor vehicle (CMV) carriers and drivers are complying with safety rules, and to intervene earlier with those who are not. This new CSA 2010 Operational Model has three major components:

Measurement: CSA 2010 measures safety performance in new ways, using inspection and crash results to identify carriers whose behaviors could reasonably lead to crashes and to quantify performance in the following Behavior Analysis Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs.

Evaluation: CSA 2010 helps the FMCSA and its state partners to correct high risk behavior by contacting more carriers and drivers, with interventions tailored to their specific safety problem as well as a new safety fitness determination methodology. The new Safety Measurement System allows the FMCSA to more effectively evaluate safety performance, using new measures for identifying which carriers require what type of intervention using a policy-driven process called intervention selection, and determining which carriers should be proposed unfit to operate, using a regulatory process called Safety Fitness Determination.

Intervention: CSA 2010 covers the full spectrum of safety issues – from how data is collected, evaluated, and shared to how enforcement officials can intervene most effectively and efficiently to improve safety on our roads. Interventions can be broken up into three categories: Early contact, Investigation and Follow-on.

The FMCSA launched a field test of the CSA 2010 Operation Model in four states, and then added five more states in 2009. The FMCSA designed a 2010 rollout schedule in order to methodically and gradually step federal and state enforcement staff, as well as the motor carrier industry into CSA 2010. By the time the program is fully implemented at the end of 2010, there will be in place a new nationwide system that will make the roads safer for both motor carriers and the public.

Cline Farrell Christie Lee & Caress are car accident attorneys in Indianapolis helping those who have been injured in vehicle related accidents. Visit their website at www.cfclc-law.com for more information.