Webinar Replay #5: The FMCSA Crash Preventability Determination Program

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Mark Rhea: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Fast Forward Webinar Series provided by Infinit-I Workforce Solutions. My name is Mark Rhea and I’ll be hosting our event today we’ve got an extremely important.

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Mark Rhea: topic to cover today.

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Mark Rhea: The new ruling that was made by the Federal Motor Carriers on crash prevention determination. We’ve got an excellent

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Mark Rhea: Yes. Speaker with us today. Mr. Mike McConnell, who I’ve worked with for many years it Frozen Food Express. He and I have worked through multiple crashes and crash prevention programs to include online training as well as compliance issues.

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Mark Rhea: He’s also spent a large part of his career with the Cisco company down in

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Mark Rhea: Houston, Texas. And he’s joining us today from the Alamo City San Antonio, Texas, Mike, you want to introduce yourself and tell us kind of set the, the theme for today.

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Mike McConnell: Yeah. Thank you, Mark, thanks for that great introduction. So Mike McConnell, I started the trucking business back in the late 70s.

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Mike McConnell: started driving in early 80s went to work for truck driving school after that and started my safety career full time in 1990.

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Mike McConnell: At FFE as Mark has mentioned. So this program has been pretty hot topic for last three years or so.

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Mike McConnell: With the ATA regulations committee and some other industry peers and executives in, you know, we actually

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Mike McConnell: Got a lot of cooperation with industry and FMCSA to make this happen with a lot of moving parts. And a lot of people involved. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today is the

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Mike McConnell: Ability to challenge crashes as being preventable or non preventable DOT crashes I’m referring to and the huge huge step that was taken to help the industry with that.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah, you know, Mike. It’s kind of humbling thinking back of the some of the decisions that have been made, relative to driver terminations or or not hiring a driver based on

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Mark Rhea: CSA points and not giving any ability to make a non preventable determination. So, you know, this is this is a big step in the right direction.

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Mark Rhea: Just, just to kind of set the tone on how we got here.

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Mark Rhea: The CSA program rolled out 10 years ago in 2010

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Mark Rhea: We were surprised at some of the initial results that rolled out but we certainly supported the project as the best mouse trap around relative to

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Mark Rhea: Making a safety fitness determination based on real time actions based on crash data, but we have learned a few things over the 10 years we have added electronic logs, which was a big help, but the program still has some shortcomings, I think we would all agree.

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Mark Rhea: One of the examples is that people in entities that are using

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Mark Rhea: Some of the CSA data.

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Mark Rhea: That really, it wasn’t designed for examples for that would be insurance, shippers. You know, insurance companies making decisions on premiums or non renewals and shippers want to hire this carrier that carrier based on a

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Mark Rhea: CSA and of course

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Mark Rhea: Our friends in the plaintiffs attorneys world have learned that these numbers are available and have used them a number of times. So I’ve got a that kind of sets the tone on where we’ve been.

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Mark Rhea: We’ve got a major breakthrough and I’ve got a couple of polling questions if we could pull those up for the audience. And while we’re answering those I’ve got a

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Mark Rhea: First question.

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Mark Rhea: What does the CSA a program need?

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Mark Rhea: And first answer is tweaking. This is a move in the right direction.

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Mark Rhea: Be overhauled, scrap the whole program, and start all over or nothing.

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Mark Rhea: And second question, which of the following parties should see your CSA scores?

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Mark Rhea: Industry renewal times, shippers, brokers, plaintiffs attorneys, none of the above, or all the above. So if you take a few minutes to answer questions. And while you’re answering those questions. I have a question for Mike.

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Mark Rhea: It’s got to do with it. You’re involved heavily involved in this rule making. Do you as an industry subject matter expert feel like this is a move in the right direction? And how did we get here? What role did you play and how did this get through some of the

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Mark Rhea: rule making entities?

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Mike McConnell: Yeah great question Mark. So yes, to start it off in and answer the first party question. Yes. I think this is a huge step for industry and FMCSA teaming up together. I think we’re seeing more and more of that than what we did a decade or, you know, decade and a half ago.

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Mike McConnell: So, so my part with this was really the committee, the regulations committee with ATA was very involved in this.

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Mike McConnell: This was brought up as a suggestion through that committee put out the lobbyists that went over to to the federal entities and Washington DC presented it. And a lot of this was based on some of the

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Mike McConnell: Some of the research that was done on crashes and they got question quite a bit.

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Mike McConnell: To FMCSA. So it was kind of a kind of a long story, but the you know the short into the long story is this is definitely a step in the right direction.

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Mike McConnell: I think you’ll see more cooperation between industry and the association, such as ATA you know truckload carriers, different, different national associations and the FMCSA working together.

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Mark Rhea: So you you’ve been involved in this for a while. And in this is a this is significant. So

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Mark Rhea: I don’t know. Can we show the results of the poll

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Mark Rhea: We’ve

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Mark Rhea: Seen

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Mark Rhea: Only 6% say no change and 26% say start all over again. So what that tells me is it is a good mouse trap. It is a good safety fitness determination and just needs some tweaking and looks like everybody’s been hit by somebody using these numbers.

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Mike McConnell: So,

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Mark Rhea: Cleaning it up will also clean up the insurance shippers and the plaintiffs attorneys getting involved so well. Great. That’s, that’s a, that’s an interesting results so

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Mark Rhea: If we could go to the next slide just to set the tone. I’ve got an example when go to the next slide please.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah. See ya.

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Mark Rhea: See this guy in the yellow shirt was driving this truck and if you can see the top of his trailer and he’s

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Mark Rhea: He’s, he’s motoring down the road, minding his own business and a small single engine aircraft hits the top of his trailer that circle is the tire of a landing gear of an aircraft that hit the top of his trailer

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Mark Rhea: In the highway patrol when they’re in his left hand as you can see is writing the report and this would meet the criteria.

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Mark Rhea: Aircraft was towed, I think. Luckily, nobody was hurt of points being assigned to this gentleman driving down the road, which was totally a non preventable accident its very unusual. This is the first one of these I’ve ever seen. And this is just setting the tone for

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Mark Rhea: What we’re we are wanting to be able to challenge.

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Mark Rhea: In this crash determination project. So, Mike. Have you ever been involved in an airplane truck crash.

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Mike McConnell: Mark, I can’t say that I have. That was the first one I had heard about this prior. But yeah, that’s definitely would fall under what we’re going to cover in a little bit as an unusual event.

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Mark Rhea: Right now, you and I have covered some unusual events we could

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Mark Rhea: We could tell some stories about that, but we don’t have time for that. So anyhow, this is the type of accident that the that the program is designed to be able to challenge and Mike, I’m going to turn the the presentation over to you and get into the details of this determination program.

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Mike McConnell: Great, thank you again Mark. Okay, so just a quick history on July 27 of 2017.

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Mike McConnell: Federal motor carriers announced this demonstration program to be able to evaluate prevent ability in eight different fresh categories and allow the industry to challenge these through DataQs.

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Mike McConnell: Of claiming that they’re non preventable. And again, you know, there were just these eight categories and they were pretty you know pretty standard stuff sitting hit in the rear,

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Mike McConnell: falling debris that we won’t go into the whole list, but there were these eight categories. And if your truck was involved in one of those, you were able to go into that DataQs challenge it as a non preventable and get a DataQ result.

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Mike McConnell: They also along with that allowed carriers to go retro that date back to June 1 of 2017 so when the accident you had from June 1 up until that date you were able to go in and do the challenge.

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Mike McConnell: On August 5 of last year 2019 and this was based on experience a lot of very good input a lot of challenges through the

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Mike McConnell: Program FMCSA proposed the crash for visibility determination program and streamline that process and added some more categories. They also set up a web page.

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Mike McConnell: Which they, you know, the acronym CPTP, which stands for crash profitability termination program now has its own website. We’re going to look at that in just a second.

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Mike McConnell: But again, companies are able to go in and challenge this and one thing. Mark mentioned earlier about the points going away.

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Mike McConnell: For the company and the driver, and that’s the beauty of this program. They’re also tied to the PSP. So if a driver is involved in been non preventable.

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Mike McConnell: It won’t show up on that PSP report against the driver so it’ll help you make better hiring decisions in the past, you know, it’s possible you passed on the driver based on an accident the DOT, that he may he or she may have had no you know no prevent ability at all.

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Mike McConnell: So that’s the kind of nuts and bolts of it. Colin if you could go to the next slide.

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Mike McConnell: So here is a list of the what we’re calling the 15 crash categories. If you read that you’ll see there’s only there’s actually only 10 I believe

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Mike McConnell: So what happened is they looked at certain crashes that kind of fell in place with each other and combine those so the

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Mike McConnell: The category 15 went down to 10 but it still includes and it’s all inclusive of those type accidents, to be able to challenge, but these are, this is the final list and any any accident you have

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Mike McConnell: As a carrier that’s DOT recordable accident that falls with any of these categories. You can go in and make that challenge through DataQs. And if you notice that very last bullet point rare or unusual.

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Mike McConnell: There’s probably not many accidents scenarios. Mark and I haven’t seen in our career but I gotta tell you, airplanes is one of them, so definitely

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Mike McConnell: And in my opinion, I’m going to err on the side of caution is I’m certain that plane had to be towed. So I’m going to go DOT on that one. In my personal register with my company.

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Mike McConnell: Then I’m obviously going to keep a close eye on the portal to see you know how that comes around. But again, I’m sure that he probably had to winch the airplane up on the trailer and carry it out. So that would be a total away and you know

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Mark Rhea: You know, Mike. The, the classification that that no pun intended strikes me as an animal strike in the multiple animal strike accidents that we’ve

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Mark Rhea: Worked over the years. And if I’m not mistaken. We had one that was actually classified with a fatality. So they claim the animal fatality charged against us. And it took

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Mark Rhea: Quite a while to get that reverse. Is it, is that true

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Mike McConnell: That’s true. Mark, I have been impressed with your memory. I remember that. Will it was, if I remember right, it was elk that we struck in the police officer.

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Mike McConnell: Joke, you know, we’re at asked for fatality just happened if he did it by mistake as a joke. Who knows he marked fatality because of the elk, and we got hit with a fatality accident and we were able to get that change.

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Mike McConnell: You know through committee, it was before this had come about. But we did get that removed. But to your point, yes, that’s true story.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah. The other big one is, of course, under the influence.

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Mark Rhea: You know, getting hit by someone who is under the influence or impaired is is fairly common out there. So,  this list encompasses a large number of crashes that can now be challenged and if successfully held up

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Mark Rhea: Removed from your CSA scores.

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Mike McConnell: Yeah. And again, big, big step with the industry and FMCSA teaming up and working together on this, it just

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Mike McConnell: I guess for a better choice of words have to say it warms my heart a little bit to be able to see these two groups that have been, you know, pretty, pretty separated in the past coming together more and more. And I think this is just the beginning. Great.

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Mike McConnell: Okay, so think we know the next slide. Colin If you wouldn’t please.

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Mike McConnell: Okay, so just a quick review here. This is a we talked about most of this rare or unusual crash was added and you see some references to a

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Mike McConnell: Couple of different accidents over there. If any of you ever had a skydiver land on top of your truck, well doubtful, but that happened somewhere and and obviously being a fatality that’s going to be DOT recordable regardless if there was a total or way or injury that’s a, that’s a given.

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Mike McConnell: So the SMS scores are not going to reflect the non preventable. In other words, it won’t be factored into your per million mile rate.

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Mike McConnell: And then the SMS website will reflect non Preventable, preventable and undecided. So those are the three categories not preventable, which will be done through a challenge, preventable and undecided.

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Mike McConnell: Again we spoke about the PSP report the point as part of the program. This will not be included in a PSP report on a driver or it will be shown is not preventable and won’t count towards his

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Mike McConnell: Violation side of that report, and then also police reports. Got to be submitted when you’re challenging one of these crashes. So it’s important that

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Mike McConnell: when something like this happens is one, you know, make sure you do everything you can on scene to have your driver, get a police report and a lot of cases, you know, people don’t want to do that, especially if they feel like they’re at fault in the accident. So that’s a

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Mike McConnell: Good one to remember, try to always get that police report. Okay. Then, once this final rule notice is published and that should be happening any day now.

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Mike McConnell: Any of these crashes that occurred on or after August first of 2019 can be submitted. So they’ve retro this program back again.

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Mike McConnell: As the final rule was put in place and you can go back to August 1 and and submit your, your challenge through DataQs for any of these categories 15 categories of the accidents and then moving on. We’re going to get just a screenshot, I believe.

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Mark Rhea: Mike. Mike, I gotta ask you one quick question. Just, just

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Mark Rhea: If you go back to that slide I know we’re going to get the screenshot. It’s not hard. I’ve got to ask you about bullet item three, it has an a classification of undecided.

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Yes.

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Mark Rhea: undecided.

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Mark Rhea: Can you can shedding the light on that.

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Mike McConnell: Yeah. Yeah, I can. This actually was part of the committee discussion with ATA so undecided is going to fall in when you challenge, one of these, and it goes to FMCSA

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Mike McConnell: If they cannot determine one way or the other. It’s going to go in this undecided category. Now, if it’s one of the 15 we’re talking about

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Mike McConnell: It should be cut and dried, especially if you have that police report, which will help you tremendously.

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Mike McConnell: But the only way the points are going to be removed. Our understanding is on the preventable that are deemed non preventable. Now again, when this is proposed final in the rule you know that already could change, but our understanding is that the undecided will still have the points included.

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Mark Rhea: And I would presume, and I know we’re early into this that to the default is a preventable. The challenge would put it into a determination, but to enter an undecided. It would have to have to be challenged at some point.

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Mark Rhea: Correct. Wow, that’s a and I sure wish that would have been available in some of the depositions I’ve given to some of our plaintiff’s attorney friends.

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Mark Rhea: Don’t understand that.

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Mark Rhea: The term undecided. So

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Mark Rhea: That’s this is a significant

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Mark Rhea: Breakthrough in our industry here being able to make this determination, the PSP reports for. And again, this poor driver. We showed it was driving down in an airplane.

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Mark Rhea: Would have been hit so and if he would have hit his PSP report and now he would hit as a non preventable and he could explain what happened, rather than

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Mark Rhea: Just charging him with a preventable accident.

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Mike McConnell: Yep, and all that drivers got a conversation piece for a lifetime doesn’t he.

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Mark Rhea: He does. Yes, sir.

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Mike McConnell: Okay, yeah, great point. Mark, thanks for pointing that out. And thanks for bringing that question up.

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Mike McConnell: Okay Colin, if you could advanced and we’ll get a, just a quick look. So this is the this is what the landing page on that new CPDP.

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Mike McConnell: Websites going to look like. And if you’ve noticed the arrow to the left I pointed to the FMCSA DataQs. If you click on that link, it will take you to the next page.

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Mike McConnell: Which is what this is actually where you sign in to your CSA website now couldn’t go further on this because I’m not tied to a specific trucking company these days as a

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Mike McConnell: Consultant.

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Mike McConnell: But if you’ve got your if you’re the administrator for your CSA your CSA program you can log in and you can access the DataQs from here or you can still go through the FMCSA portal, like we’ve done for forever, basically. And that’s simply our next page Colins going to show that.

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Mike McConnell: And just a quick screenshot. Obviously, this is an old company I worked with. So we didn’t put the name up there. But if you see on the top left, you’ve got that small arrow pointing DataQs. When you click and highlight that DataQ.

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Mike McConnell: Then you click on that. No button and it’s going to take you into the DataQ page.

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Mike McConnell: Here, and from here really self explanatory. If you’ve never done a challenge. I would imagine most of you on the call. Probably have.

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Mike McConnell: But if you haven’t. I’ve got a couple more screenshots ahead of this to give you an idea, but this is where you go to start your challenge. When you get to the next page.

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Mike McConnell: You’re going to choose crash event because that’s what you’re challenging and the next page will show us.

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Mike McConnell: That you believe the crash could not be prevented and then this is just one click there.

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Mike McConnell: On the next button, of course, will take you to the next place. Now this is the nuts and bolts of it. This is where you’ve got to put good information in there to make sure

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Mike McConnell: They get the proper accident pulled up and that’s obviously the state your US DOT number. The FMCSA crash report number which will be printed on that report.

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Mike McConnell: And then the event date now it’s key here, I believe, to know that when you’re looking in the portal. For example, if you pull a loss run history for your DOT recordables, it’s going to ask you if you want

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Mike McConnell: An event date or posting date always choose that event that because FMCSA rarely gets anything posted the same day it happened. So you’ve got two different choices, they’re posting date, which is when they upload it to the website, crashed date is when you actually

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Mike McConnell: When it actually happened. And that’s always the date you want to use. And then, of course, your vehicle state and plate number

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Mike McConnell: And then on the next slide. But I’ll tell you from here. I didn’t have actual data to put in. If you could just go to the next slide please Colin.

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Mike McConnell: Will go in here for a few comments, but the next page is where you’re going to do the nuts and bolts of it again. We didn’t have a live crash to put in there and I couldn’t for a lot of you know privacy reasons, put a

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Mike McConnell: Put a crash in there from a previous carrier, so we’ll leave that there, but it’s begin very self explanatory, you put in there, the information they request.

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Mike McConnell: hit the submit button and usually within a couple of days to a week or you get an answer on this if it goes the way

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Mike McConnell: Most other challenges or go now, there’s a good chance they’ll be flooded with these in the beginning. So the responses might be a little slower.

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Mike McConnell: But right now for violations and what we’ve noticed I’ve, I’ve actually challenged three of these with a previous carrier that fill in that determination program. We won all three of them. I had my answer within a week on all three.

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Mike McConnell: So anyway, comments on this. That’s kind of the nuts and bolts of it. I know we went through the screenshots pretty quick, but

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Mike McConnell: If you have any questions or trouble, creating a challenge my contact information will be up here as well as Mark, you can contact me anytime

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Mike McConnell: You know, I’ll walk you through it over the phone, free of charge. No problem at all up or obviously if you know you need my services. We can we can do that as well.

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Mike McConnell: So Mark, do you want, Mike.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah, Mike. Thank you. Thank you for that. Overview. This is a

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Mike McConnell: Certainly.

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Mark Rhea: Can be classified as a major breakthrough, but here’s, here’s the big question. The big question is, what’s next, what’s next. Do you think this

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Mark Rhea: This will be a conclusion of the CSA reform or do you anticipate. I know there’s a lot of talk about the ability to evaluate a carrier’s safety culture, which is a little subjective, a little not quite as data driven

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Mark Rhea: What, what do you think is there a follow up to this or is this a one and done project for for the CSA program.

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Mike McConnell: I don’t believe it is at all. Mark, I think, I think the challenge piece is probably as far as it’ll go other than possibly adding some other categories as we go along. But I think this really opens the door to other areas of CSA because there have been a lot of

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Mike McConnell: I guess we say controversial comments as to

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Mike McConnell: You know what the, what the program does to a carrier, especially a small carrier that doesn’t get very many

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Mike McConnell: Inspections, you know, one out of service inspection can just know you to the cross and we’ve seen that time after time. The one thing I will tell you.

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Mike McConnell: As a consultant or a manager with a company dig into these and when you’re doing these insurance reviews with your insurance companies.

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Mike McConnell: They base everything on history. That’s just the nature of that of that industry dig into these and I have a classic example a carrier. I worked with a couple of weeks ago.

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Mike McConnell: Had some very high numbers again small carrier didn’t get a lot of inspections, but when you dug into the data or when I when I really dig into the data.

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Mike McConnell: They’ve not had a violation since June of 2019 and he was still paying for a lot of sins of the past and paying some pretty extremely high.

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Mike McConnell: Insurance rates so it’s a negotiation when you’re sitting at a table with them, you know, challenge that stuff when you can and go in and dig into the data.

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Mike McConnell: And don’t take it for just what’s on the what’s on the surface. I guess that’s probably the best the best advice I can give Mark.

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Mark Rhea: Okay, well,

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Mark Rhea: I’m sure a lot of our listening audience is scrambling around saying, Okay, I need to figure out how to challenge some of my non preventable accidents.

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Mark Rhea: But if the safety culture is is the next step. And there’s a lot of I know the National Academy of Science did a large study on CSA and this was one of their

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Mark Rhea: Conclusions, what would you consider important for a carrier to prepare for a cultural assessment of their safety fitness.

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Mike McConnell: You can never do enough training Mark. Whether it’s just the culture, you know, from a

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Mike McConnell: Just from my loss prevention or litigation. You can’t do it enough. And I did. I’ve done expert witness stuff for attorneys and insurance companies and that’s one thing that

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Mike McConnell: Anytime we don’t do well in litigation 90% of the time it’s based on a lack of training, whether that’s

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Mike McConnell: Whether that scheduled training annually by annually, however you do it or maybe remedial training after an accident is huge. That’s what the attorneys. Want to see that’s what its easy for us to fight the plaintiff’s attorney on

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Mike McConnell: And, you know, include that in our reports and get Infinit-I is a great tool. I’ve worked with these guys for a number of years. Use the program.

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Mike McConnell: You know, for the cost effectiveness. You can’t beat it. And there you know there’s great programs out there. This is one that I’m proud to say that I have partnered with because I believe in it.

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Mike McConnell: It doesn’t sink the ship for cost. You just can’t beat it. But whatever you do, just make sure that training is done and stick to your program. Don’t. Don’t. Very off of it. You like this driver, a little better. The other one be consistent. That’s another another key.

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Mark Rhea: Nothing we have found out through multiple depositions, of course, is doing the training and then being able to document that training or two different

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Mark Rhea: Two different issues. And I know there’s a lot of new technologies cameras. There’s a lot of things coming out there. So, all in the if the next step is a cultural assessment of a carrier

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Mark Rhea: The, the actions taken to challenge a crash the technology that’s being utilized as a, you know, reasonable expectation

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Mark Rhea: Document training, documented DQ files.

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Mark Rhea: All of these things are going to be

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Mark Rhea: boiled up into a cultural assessment and

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Mark Rhea: I think, I think that’s probably next on the horizon for our for the CSA program, which I certainly agree with.

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Mike McConnell: You. I think you’re right. And you know, when you when you

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Mike McConnell: When you, when you break all this stuff down. I think you’ll see that

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Mike McConnell: You’ll be surprised what you see, if you haven’t done that, you know, and if you’re good at doing like little graphs and trending graphs. That’s great to do with that data.

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Mike McConnell: From your CSA scores. You can see if you’re if one obviously if you’re violations are going up and down, but that trend line means a lot and insurance carrier like to see that too is, even if you have a bad infection.

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Mike McConnell: Over, you know, the last year or so that trend line could still doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to creep up, it could keep

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Mike McConnell: creeping down. And that’s basically showing that, you know, even though you’ve had a hiccup or two along the way you’re actually trending that trend is going down and not going up which which is big.

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Mark Rhea: Recognizing and then doing something about it. So we’ve got a lot of questions. So I do want to keep rolling here if you can go to the next slide colin.

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Mark Rhea: So moving ahead, looking ahead.

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Mark Rhea: To preparing for a cultural assessment. Jay, and his team and an Iffinit-I Workforce Solutions is now offering a 30 day free trial which I would

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Mark Rhea: Certainly take advantage of get yourself ready. Do you have the corrective actions documented for out of service violations for anything and hit your CSA program. They have content that covers. I think 850 different modules of content so

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Mark Rhea: We’re they’re offering a 30 day free trial which I strongly encourage and

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Mark Rhea: Mike, you’re offering a 20% discount for anybody that needs to your assistance in cleaning up some of their CSA scores and which like that information is there. I don’t know if you want to share that little

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Mike McConnell: Well, yeah. And actually there’s a link to Infinit-I on my website. So if you have the need

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Mike McConnell: Or you want to look at my website easy www.tsmconsultingllc.com you can access Infinit-I. From there, or obviously

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Mike McConnell: You know directly to the number there but i would i would recommend everyone on the call. If you’re not using it, take them up on that 30 day offer. I think you’ll see the

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Mike McConnell: Bang, you’re going to get for your buck out of these folks is huge. And this is not as, you know, this isn’t a sales pitch for Infinit-I. I believe in it. I’m passionate about it.

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Mike McConnell: And, you know, and I think Mark would agree and his passion for safety as much as mine, if not more, that, you know, when we believe in something in the past we support it and we you know we push it out as much as we can and to great program.

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Mark Rhea: Calling can go to the next screen there. Yes. And you know, we, we’ve been event deposition. We’ve, we’ve been on that side of the

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Mark Rhea: There’s the contacts and I think there’s a poll question.

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Mark Rhea: Next slide.

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Mark Rhea: Here you go. Okay. And if you want to learn more about the 30 day complimentary and preparing for the next stage just hit. Yes. If you want to talk to Mike about the, about his services and

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Mark Rhea: How you can help start to clean up of your CSA scores and then hit yes, there will contact you here in a little bit on that issue. While while you’re answering that. There’s a number of questions here that have popped up if I can get this work.

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Mark Rhea: Here’s a question overwhelm safety manager here.

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Mark Rhea: New to this role, is it worth my time to go through the resubmission process. I’m assuming they’re talking about the challenge process. Mike, you want to jump on that one.

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Mike McConnell: Absolutely. It sounds like that may be one they submitted and did not win if that’s the case, there are some steps you can take

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Mike McConnell: Probably better if we take that on the side note, if they want to call me or email me directly. We can talk about that more. But if it’s a challenge. You haven’t put forth by all means.

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Mike McConnell: What we don’t want to do is they’re very clear what areas on these accidents that we can challenge. Don’t throw one out there that doesn’t fit it because that’s one thing that

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Mike McConnell: You know that takes stability and integrity away from the industry if it fits that, by all means, put it out there.

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Mike McConnell: Or if it’s a violation. By the same token, you don’t feel like it’s should have been written. You know, based on what the facts are challenging it

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Mike McConnell: Another one is stacking violations, we see that a lot. I’ve challenged a lot of those where you got

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Mike McConnell: Say the trooper found eight breaks out of service. He wrote up eight violations instead of one. We’ve been able to challenge and that’s huge. I mean, that was almost 200 points in one in one inspection. We got that.

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Mike McConnell: Knocked down to about 50 points with that one challenge. So yes, by all means, put them out there.

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Mark Rhea: Here’s another question. Why did they go back to August, 1 2019,

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Mark Rhea: And not further back to be able to challenge and non preventable crash. Thats a great question.

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Mike McConnell: Yeah. And the answer to that is we don’t know the answer to that. Be honest with you.

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Mike McConnell: I’ve done research on that through committee and we are, we didn’t get to meet due to COVID-19 our committee didn’t get to do our, our last

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Mike McConnell: Staff or committee meeting back in February when all those are actually March, I stand corrected. So the question is, we don’t really know why that didn’t go back further.

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Mike McConnell: You know, the good news is I guess to that as they are allowing us to go back for that six or seventh month period, whatever that is.

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Mike McConnell: So I will tell you this, I won’t, I won’t give up on that. If I do find an answer. I can certainly include it to this recording or shoot it out to the masses that we’re on here. If I do get a better answer. You have my word on that. Okay.

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Mark Rhea: Here’s another question in the first phase of this program, even though the accident was deemed non preventable by FMCSA the accident remained on CSA with the disclaimer going forward under this phase will the accent be removed or still remain as a non determination is made.

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Mike McConnell: It will remain, but it will show as a non preventable and it will not calculate into your per million mile rate. FMCSA has been very clear on that. So,

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Mike McConnell: You have to remember that FMCSA compiles data for both sides of the fence the trucking company and the four wheeler know for a better choice of words. So

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Mike McConnell: They keep that data because they want to see a lot of things they want to see, you know, we’re drugs and alcohol involved was the

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Mike McConnell: Car at fault or was the truck at fault. So they’re not going to remove it completely from the, from the portal or your account, but it will not go against your point. You’re per million mile rate.

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Mark Rhea: Okay, here’s, here’s another one. I know. We don’t know the answer this one. But I’m gonna it’s such a great question. Will you be able to challenge an undecided decision.

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Mike McConnell: A. That’s a great question. My, my guess would be probably so I think probably one of the only things are not the only thing. But I think one of the things that would probably knock it to an undecided is say

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Mike McConnell: For example you challenge one but did not have a police report, but you have really good effect from the accident.

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Mike McConnell: They look at and say, okay, we specifically asked for a police report, they’ll get that and resubmit your challenge.

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Mike McConnell: There’s nothing really written about that to this point. So it may be one of those will know the answer, for sure. The first time it happens but

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Mike McConnell: My opinion would be from, you know, working with rules like this for a long, long time, and working more closely with FMCSA now with the regulations committee that we will be able to, it’s probably, you know, going to be due to something that was left out in the original challenge. Gotcha.

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Mark Rhea: Okay, well let’s listen, which wrap everything up here. We’ve covered a lot of ground here.

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Mark Rhea: We polled the audience and the overwhelming at the overwhelming 70% all of the group said that CSA program just needs tweaking which this is clearly a tweak a significant tweak in the right direction.

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Mark Rhea: Parties everybody appears to have someone has used their CSA scores to establish a premium for an insurance or used against you in a lawsuit or make a decision to use you or a competitor based on on the score so managing the scores is

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Mark Rhea: That requirements, not going away and in we can anticipate more changes and those changes will probably be toward this

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Mark Rhea: Cultural and when I say cultural what I guess the best way is, or do you practice what you’ve preached, are you putting on a show that you support safety or are you actively practicing with the best technology with, online training, with documenting your training,

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Mark Rhea: all the the cameras that are out there, all the things that would can be assessed on a day to day carriers world, are they actually doing things and I think that’s a move and huge move in the right direction. So,

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Mark Rhea: We’re right on time here next week we have a very exciting topic fit for duty, which is very applicable in today’s world, we’ll have Dr. Shirley.

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Mark Rhea: Be joining us about a fit who’s done probably 15,000 fit for duty determinations and back to work requirements for office and administrative staff and how do we had a we get back to normalized work world in this from the views of a doctor who is

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Mark Rhea: Actually nationally renowned for for the work he’s done. So that’ll be next Thursday. My from San Antonio. Thank you very much for your input.

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Mark Rhea: It’s a big breakthrough and thank you for the work you did with the ATA and the FMCSA to get this rulemaking in place.

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Mike McConnell: Great. Thank you, Mark, really enjoyed this and you know look forward to these in the future.

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Mark Rhea: Thank you very much. We’ll see you next week.

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Mike McConnell: Thank you.