Recommendation: To promote the transition to improved crash test standards, to strengthen FHWA's oversight of the roadside safety hardware's crash-testing process, and to make more information available to states and industry on how roadside safety hardware performs in actual conditions, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the Administrator of FHWA to provide additional guidance to crash test labs and accreditation bodies to ensure that labs have a clear separation between device development and testing in cases where lab employees test devices that were developed within their parent organization.

Agency: Department of Transportation
Status: Open

Comments: As of January 2020, FHWA has not determined what actions, if any, it plans to take to address this recommendation. During 2019, FHWA officials stated that the agency was planning, in consultation with state departments of transportation, to establish a mechanism for third party verification of results from crash-test labs. The initial plan was to work with an outside organization that would assume responsibility for third party verification by mid to late 2020. This outside organization was to be responsible for developing guidelines with respect to lab independence and dealing with cases where a testing lab and a hardware developer are owned by the same parent company. According to FHWA officials, while the agency engaged with two outside organizations, it has not been able to establish a mechanism for third party verification of results through an outside organization and is considering additional options. As a result, FHWA is re-evaluating actions to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To promote the transition to improved crash test standards, to strengthen FHWA's oversight of the roadside safety hardware's crash-testing process, and to make more information available to states and industry on how roadside safety hardware performs in actual conditions, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the Administrator of FHWA to develop a process for third-party verification of results from crash-test labs.

Agency: Department of Transportation
Status: Open

Comments: As of January 2020, FHWA has not determined what actions, if any, it plans to take to address this recommendation. During 2019, FHWA officials stated that the agency was planning, in consultation with state departments of transportation, to establish a mechanism for third party verification of results from crash-test labs. The initial plan was to work with an outside organization that would assume responsibility for third party verification by mid to late 2020. According to FHWA officials, while the agency engaged with two outside organizations, it has not been able to establish a mechanism for third party verification of results through an outside organization and is considering additional options. As a result, FHWA is re-evaluating actions to address this recommendation.

Recommendation: To promote the transition to improved crash test standards, to strengthen FHWA's oversight of the roadside safety hardware's crash-testing process, and to make more information available to states and industry on how roadside safety hardware performs in actual conditions, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the Administrator of FHWA to support additional research and disseminate results on roadside safety hardware's in-service performance, either as part of future phases of FHWA's current pilot study on guardrail end terminals' performance or as part of FHWA's broader research portfolio.

Agency: Department of Transportation
Status: Open

Comments: As of January 2020, FHWA officials stated that the agency expects the pilot program report to be issued in December 2020, but it will not report results because the sample sizes were too small. In addition, officials told us that no further research into in-service performance evaluations are planned.

Recommendation: To improve the CSA program, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FMCSA Administrator to revise the SMS methodology to better account for limitations in drawing comparisons of safety performance information across carriers; in doing so, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FMCSA Administrator to conduct a formal analysis that specifically identifies: (1) limitations in the data used to calculate SMS scores including variability in the carrier population and the quality and quantity of data available for carrier safety performance assessments, and (2) limitations in the resulting SMS scores including their precision, confidence, and reliability for the purposes for which they are used.

Agency: Department of Transportation
Status: Open
Priority recommendation

Comments: FMCSA did not agree with our recommendation, disputing the methodology and conclusions in our report. However, we continue to believe that addressing Safety Measurement System (SMS) methodology limitations has merit and could help the agency better target FMCSA's resources to the carriers that pose the highest risk of crashing. For example, we found FMCSA requires a minimum level of information for a carrier to receive an SMS score; however, this requirement is not strong enough to produce sufficiently reliable scores. As a result, FMCSA identified many carriers as high risk that were not later involved in a crash, potentially causing FMCSA to miss opportunities to intervene with higher risk carriers. To fully implement this recommendation, FMCSA should revise SMS methodology to account for data limitations that limit comparisons so that the FMCSA is better positioned to identify and mitigate carriers that pose the greatest safety risks. FMCSA has recently developed and tested a new methodological approach that could potentially account for the limitations we identified. While FMCSA has not yet committed to deploying the new methodology, they hope to do so some time in 2020.

Recommendation: To improve the CSA program, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FMCSA Administrator to ensure that any determination of a carrier's fitness to operate properly accounts for limitations we have identified regarding safety performance information.

Agency: Department of Transportation
Status: Open

Comments: The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) agreed with the basic principles that GAO addressed in this area, but disagreed with GAO's characterization of FMCSA's proposed Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) rule. In January 2016, FMCSA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), which proposed a revised methodology for issuance of a safety fitness determination for motor carriers. Specifically, the new methodology would have determined when a motor carrier is not fit to operate commercial motor vehicles in or affecting interstate commerce based on the carrier's on-road safety data; an investigation; or a combination of both. However, in July 2018, in part due to a review of SMS by the National Academies of Science congressionally mandated evaluation of SMS, FMCSA announced that the enhancements previously proposed will not be completed.