Intervention Letters

DOT’s New Enforcement Strategy – “Intervention Letters” – are filling scrapyard mailboxes. Yours could be next!

As ISRI Safety has been promoting for the last year, The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is full speed ahead with the new on-the road driver and carrier enforcement effort – CSA2010.  In FMCSA’s view it’s a methodology to reach out and ‘touch’ many more commercial motor carriers than their limited resources and manpower traditionally have offered. And for the first time in their history DOT is now evaluating the ‘safety history and performance’ of individual CDL drivers!

Several ISRI member companies have reported receipt of these Intervention Letters – the first step in their new enforcement activities – a direct result of driver compliance and vehicle maintenance performance.  The new Seven Deadly Sins – BASIC categories – are being evaluated and used daily during carrier roadside inspections, at scales, and whenever a driver receives a moving violation.  These seven BASIC categories;

1.       Unsafe Driving

2.       Driver Fitness

3.       Fatigued Driving

4.       Cargo-related

5.       Vehicle Maintenance

6.       Controlled Substances

7.       Crash History

are each ‘scored’ when a vehicle and driver receives an inspection and the subsequent ‘safety rating’ percentile is logged into a nationwide database for review by DOT and State enforcement personnel. If your driver receives a total monthly score above pre-establish threshold percentiles, a big screaming flag goes up triggering intervention activity.

Scrapyards operating fleets (even one regulated truck and driver) should be logging on to: http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms to request a PIN and start reviewing their own company and driver scores. The data is updated monthly, so drivers that might otherwise neglect to inform the company of an infraction and resultant violation cannot hide from the official record. If any one of the seven BASIC scoring categories is deficient – above the threshold for that category – an Intervention Letter is likely, and your company should strive to improve driver and vehicle performance.

 

Scrapyards operating commercial motor vehicles should be aware that ongoing poor performance in just two of the seven categories – unsafe driving and fatigued driving – can ultimately lead to the revocation of your operating authority! Period! You’re no longer allowed to operate trucks. Lets face it, trucking is a necessary part of the scrap recycling industry, so you don’t ever want to let repeat violations get this far.

 Some recorded data might be questionable 

More than a few scrap recyclers have reported that upon viewing their CSA2010 scores some of the information was just plain wrong. Drivers not even employed by the company, or contract drivers operating under their own DOT Number had ended up in their CSA2010 scoring.  There is hope.  Within the new CSA2010 database is a function to officially contest what you believe to be erroneous violations or improper total scores. This function, called “DataQ”s has existed under the former SafeStat compliance safety rating system and remains available to adjust improper assignment of points that are not yours.  Use the system. It does work. Be patient.

 Follow the guidance ISRI Safety has posted on http://www.isirsafety.org 

As an ongoing compliance improvement effort, ISRI Safety encourages all member scrap recyclers to engage in aggressive driver dialogue as frequently as possible, to encourage their good on-the-road performance.  Drivers who receive roadside and scale inspections with NO recorded violations should ask the Inspector to enter an electronic report. That is the ONLY method to reduce the CSA2010 score to an acceptable level. The driver should ask for a copy of the written report to bring back to the fleet manager. Some members have instituted incentive programs to reward drivers who have violation-free inspections. That should be the goal – no violations!

 

Use the weekly For Your Driving (FYD) email training materials and sign up if you’re not receiving them now.  Show your drivers the “Dave” video on CSA2010.  Print the one-page bullet points we’ve put together for everyone’s learning.  And continually encourage your drivers to keep a clean driving record – no speeding, everyday seatbelt use, no improper lane changes or other reckless driving, and never operate a truck or trailer with questionable safety.

 If you receive an Intervention Letter 

The DOT’s FMCSA does not require a response when an intervention letter is received but you must develop strategies for improvement…. and document implementation of these meaningful steps.  The improvement will be readily viewable online – by anyone – and certainly by FMCSA enforcement staff. Many members have voluntarily responded with comprehensive letters of reply, identifying the steps they’ve taken to improve compliance performance. Just make sure you do what you say you are doing, as the next step in the intervention process could well be an on-site comprehensive compliance review!

  

Tom Herod is ISRI’s Director of Transportation Safety.  He can be reached at 202-662-8519 or tomherod@isri.org