About to catch your breath because you’ve finally gotten Compliance, Safety, Accountability under control? Not so fast.
Safety compliance expert Jeff Davis, principle officer for Fleet Safety Services, told CCJ Summer Symposium attendees in LaJolla Ca., this morning that a virtual tsunami of add-on CSA regulations and requirements is about to hit the trucking industry.
Citing “regulation fatigue” at the executive level, Davis nevertheless maintains that truck fleets will have to redouble their efforts to stay ahead of the curve on CSA in order to protect their BASIC scores – which are coming under increasing scrutiny by law enforcement agencies and regulatory agencies like FMCSA as well as shippers and insurance companies.
“We’ve come through Phase 1 of the CSA,” Davis explains, “which was the actual launch of the program and understanding how it would work. For better or worse, we now have that information. Now we’re entering Phase 2, which is the actual intervention phase which CSA was all about in the first place.”
In other words, Davis says, fleets must shift from educating themselves about CSA to learning how to operate in a world largely defined by how the program views them – a process made even more complicated by the fact that new CSA requirements are looming and the program itself is being used (and abused) in ways never intended.
Davis told Symposium attendees in his estimation, a primary internal purpose of the CSA program was to force motor carriers into using electronic logs. In fact, he maintains that use of e-logs is the only way fleets today can accurately track and control Hours of Service compliance to head off detrimental CSA scores.
New CSA realities now require fleets to use doctors with a Medical Providers Certification to gauge the health of their drivers.
