Miami Accident Lawyer Blog
Last month, this blog discussed the newly-passed Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration hours-of-service (“HOS”) safety requirements for commercial truck drivers, limiting the number of hours a truck driver is permitted to operate his or her vehicle during any given period of time. Since then, our Miami truck accident lawyers have been keeping an eye out for new developments related to this issue.
Last year, the FMCSA, launched the Compliance, Safety, Accountability Program (“Program”) which scores the safety of trucking carriers and is designed to increase accountability for carriers that continually violate safety regulations. Carriers that receive poor safety scores under the Program often suffer negative consequences such as loss of business from customers that don’t want to work with a carrier that has a poor safety record, greater insurance rates, and additional scrutiny from law enforcement and inspectors.
Although the Program appears, on its face, to be a step in the right direction towards increasing trucking safety standards, recent reports by not one, but two, government agencies have concluded that the Program may suffer from some problems affecting its accuracy. Both the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) and the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) have issued results of their audits of the Program, concluding that it suffers from several problems stemming from poor data quality.