New Truck Safety Rules Could Help Prevent Accidents, Save Lives

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently enacted improvements to its Safety Measurement System that may help reduce the number of deadly truck accidents on our roadways.

The SMS analyzes crash and inspection data to “prioritize carriers for interventions,” the FMSCA stated in a press release. 

SMS quantifies on-road safety performance of carriers to identify the specific safety problems the carrier exhibits and to monitor whether performance is improving or worsening. SMS helps FMCSA more efficiently apply its resources and bring carriers and drivers into compliance with Federal safety regulations in order to prevent crashes and save lives.

The changes should help the FMCSA better identify unsafe truck companies and intervene “before tragedies occur,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The SMS improvements include:

• Aligning speeding violations to be consistent with current speedometer regulations that require speedometers to be accurate within 5 mph. The change applies to the prior 24 months of data used by the SMS and all SMS data moving forward.
• Changing the name of the Fatigued Driving BASIC to the Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance BASIC to more accurately reflect violations contained within the BASIC.
• Aligning the severity weight of paper and electronic logbook violations equally on the SMS for consistency purposes.

For more information on the changes, visit the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) Web site at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/.

The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson applauds the federal government’s efforts to improve truck safety and reduce the number of deadly truck accidents. The firm provides legal representation to victims of trucking and other commercial vehicle accidents.

Whether the cause of the collision is driver fatigue, improper truck maintenance, and/or improper screening, training and supervision of drivers, the Dallas truck accident lawyers at The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson have the experience, resources and technical abilities to determine what happened and who should be held responsible.