Motor Carrier Safety: A Statistical Approach Will Better Identify Commercial Carriers That Pose High Crash Risks Than Does the Current Federal Approach
Highlights
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has the primary federal responsibility for reducing crashes involving large trucks and buses that operate in interstate commerce. FMCSA decides which motor carriers to review for compliance with its safety regulations primarily by using an automated, data-driven analysis model called SafeStat. SafeStat uses data on crashes and other data to assign carriers priorities for compliance reviews. GAO assessed (1) the extent to which changes to the SafeStat model could improve its ability to identify carriers that pose high crash risks and (2) how the quality of the data used affects SafeStat's performance. To carry out its work, GAO analyzed how SafeStat identified high-risk carriers in 2004 and compared these results with crash data through 2005.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Transportation | The Secretary of Transportation should direct the Administrator of FMCSA to apply a negative binomial regression model, such as the one discussed in this report, to enhance the current SafeStat methodology. |
Closed – Not Implemented
We issued a companion report (GAO-07-584) with a related recommendation to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) which advocates an alternative method to the one recommended in GAO-07-585 for identifying motor carriers which pose high crash risk. In responding to the reports, FMCSA chose to implement the alternative approach recommended in our companion report.
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