a

GAO

United States Government Accountability Office

Report to Congressional Committees

December 2005 LARGE TRUCK 

SAFETY

Federal Enforcement 

Efforts Have Been 

Stronger Since 2000, 

but Oversight of State 

Grants Needs 

Improvement

GAO-06-156
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

December 2005

LARGE TRUCK SAFETY 

Federal Enforcement Efforts Have Been 

Stronger Since 2000, but Oversight of 

State Grants Needs Improvement 

Highlights of GAO-06-156, a report to 

congressional committees 

About 5,000 people die and more 

than 120,000 are injured each year 

from crashes involving large

trucks. The Federal Motor Carrier

Safety Administration (FMCSA) 

has several enforcement programs

to improve truck safety and funds

similar enforcement programs in 

states through its Motor Carrier 

Safety Assistance Program

(MCSAP). Following concern by

Congress and others in 1999 that 

FMCSA’s enforcement approach

was ineffective, the agency

committed to take stronger actions. 

This study reports on how 

FMCSA’s enforcement approach 

has changed, how it makes 

decisions about its enforcement 

approach, and how it ensures that 

its grants to states contribute to the

agency’s mission of saving lives. 

What GAO Recommends

GAO makes several 

recommendations to improve 

FMCSA’s ability to determine the

effectiveness of its enforcement

approach and strengthen the

agency’s oversight of MCSAP, such 

as measuring the effectiveness of

its civil penalties and ensuring that

existing planning and oversight

mechanisms are carried out. 

GAO provided a draft of this report 

to the Department of

Transportation for its review and 

comment. The department

generally agreed with the report’s

findings and agreed to consider our 

recommendations. 

FMCSA has made considerable strides in strengthening its enforcement 

programs and actions. For example, it almost doubled the number of on-site 

safety reviews (called compliance reviews) at carriers’ bases of operations, 

from approximately 6,400 in 1998 to 11,300 in 2004. Further, it has increased 

the average civil penalty by about 75 percent (from $820 to $1,400) over the 

same period. FMCSA generally maintained its firmer approach to 

enforcement at a time when it took on the additional responsibilities of 

conducting homeland security-related reviews of hazardous materials 

carriers and safety reviews of new carriers. 

To a large extent, FMCSA follows key effective management practices in 

making decisions about its enforcement approach. For example, its 

enforcement approach addresses major risk areas that contribute to (or 

cause) crashes, and targets its enforcement resources at the motor carriers 

with the greatest crash risk. FMCSA also has a broad range of enforcement 

goals and performance measures that it uses to provide direction to—and 

track the performance of—its enforcement programs. Furthermore, FMCSA 

is working to obtain additional information on crash risk factors and on the 

costs and effectiveness of its enforcement programs, as well as alternative

approaches that it needs to further refine and set priorities for its programs. 

However, because FMCSA does not measure the effect that one of its key 

enforcement tools—civil penalties—has on carriers’ compliance with safety 

regulations, it lacks the information needed to make sound decisions about 

any changes to its use of civil penalties.

MCSAP is designed to improve safety by employing a performance-based 

approach; however, FMCSA’s oversight for these grants is inadequate. In 

reviewing the 61 program goals set by the seven states that received the 

largest MCSAP grants, we could not determine whether states substantially 

met almost two-thirds of these goals due to missing performance 

information, among other reasons. Further, although FMCSA requires that 

its various offices periodically review grant activities for adequacy of 

oversight, few of these reviews are being completed. For example, in the

past 3 years, FMCSA’s service centers have assessed only 15 of the agency’s 

52 field division offices (29 percent). FMCSA did not conduct these reviews 

for various reasons, including a curbed oversight role for service centers and 

markedly reduced headquarters staffing for MCSAP.

FMCSA’s progress on initiatives to improve truck safety enforcement 

Element Progress

Strengthen enforcement programs and actions

Understand the causes of crashes and implement cost-effectiveness programs

Implement a performance-based MCSAP grant program and conduct

oversight reviews of grantee and agency program activities

Fully incorporated Partially incorporated

Source: GAO.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-156.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact 

Katherine Siggerud at (202) 512-2834 or 

siggerudk@gao.gov. 
Page i GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Contents

Letter 1

Results in Brief 4

Background 6

FMCSA’s Enforcement Programs and Actions Have Been Stronger 

Since 2000 13

FMCSA Has a Well-Defined Enforcement Approach and Has Efforts 

Underway to Help It Refine and Set Priorities for Its Enforcement 

Programs 25

MCSAP Is Designed to Improve Safety but Program Oversight Is 

Inadequate 39

Conclusions 48

Recommendations for Executive Action 49

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 50

Appendixes

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 52

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgements 55

Tables Table 1: FMCSA’s Enforcement Programs 10

Table 2: FMCSA’s Enforcement Actions 11

Table 3: How FMCSA’s Enforcement Approach Addresses Many of 

the Major Factors that Cause or Contribute to Truck 

Crashes 26

Table 4: Examples of FMCSA’s Enforcement Program Goals and 

Performance Measures 29

Figures Figure 1: Growth in the Number of Interstate Motor Carriers, 1995 

through 2004 7

Figure 2: Fatality Rates Involving Large Truck and Passenger 

Vehicle Crashes, 1995 through 2004 8

Figure 3: Number of Compliance Reviews Conducted and 

Percentage of the Motor Carrier Industry Receiving 

Compliance Reviews, 1995 through 2004 15

Figure 4: Roadside Inspections Conducted and Planned, 1996 

through 2006 17

Figure 5: Number of Serious Violations Found and Rate of 

Enforcement, 1995 through 2004 19

Figure 6: Number of Carriers Prohibited from Operating in 

Interstate Commerce by FMCSA, 1995 through 2004 20
Contents

Page ii GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 7: Average Civil Penalty Assessed per Violation, by Type of 

Violation, Fiscal Years 1995 through 2004 (In 2004 

Dollars) 22

Figure 8: Final Assessment as Compared to Initial Assessment, 

Fiscal Years 1995 through 2004 24

Figure 9: Logic Model of How FMCSA’s Enforcement Approach 

Contributes to Truck Safety 28

Abbreviations

FMCSA Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

MCSAP Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program

PRISM Performance Registration and Information System Management

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Page 1 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

A

December 15, 2005 Letr

The Honorable Christopher Bond

Chairman

The Honorable Patty Murray

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, 

Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies

Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate

The Honorable Joe Knollenberg

Chairman 

The Honorable John W. Olver

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, and Housing 

and Urban Development, the Judiciary, 

the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies

Committee on Appropriations

House of Representatives

About 5,000 people die each year as a result of crashes involving large 

trucks,1

 and over 120,000 more are injured. Compared to a crash involving 

only cars, a crash involving a car and a truck is more likely to result in a 

fatality because of the difference in weight between the two vehicles. In 

this respect, although large trucks are involved in only 4 percent of all 

accidents, they are involved in 12 percent of all fatalities from vehicle 

crashes. These crashes may result from errors by truck and passenger 

vehicle drivers, vehicle condition, and other factors.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) within the U.S. 

Department of Transportation shoulders the primary federal responsibility 

for reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks.2

FMCSA’s primary means of preventing these crashes is to develop and 

enforce regulations to help ensure that drivers and motor carriers are 

operating in a safe manner. FMCSA uses several enforcement activities to 

1

Large trucks are those with a gross vehicle weight greater than 10,000 pounds.

2

FMCSA also has responsibility for improving the safety of commercial buses. Buses have a 

much better safety record than trucks; as a result, this report focuses on FMCSA’s large 

truck enforcement activities.
Page 2 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

improve truck safety, such as conducting inspections of motor carriers’ 

operations at their places of business—and of drivers and vehicles at the 

roadside—to ensure compliance with safety regulations. FMCSA also funds 

and oversees similar enforcement activities at the state level through its 

Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP). MCSAP was 

appropriated $188 million, or about 38 percent, of FMCSA’s $501 million 

appropriation for fiscal year 2006.

FMCSA was created in 2000 in response to concerns raised by Congress, 

the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General, and us. One of the 

Inspector General’s concerns was over the lax enforcement of safety 

regulations by FMCSA’s predecessor, the Office of Motor Carriers, within 

the Federal Highway Administration, in the late 1990s.3

 FMCSA publicly 

committed to increasing both the amount of effort devoted to enforcement 

against carriers and the severity of action when safety problems are found. 

In addition, in 1999 we reported that FMCSA did not have sufficient 

information about the factors that contribute to truck crashes to help the 

agency set priorities for its activities. In a similar vein, in 2000, we found 

that the agency’s ability to set priorities for its safety activities was limited, 

in part, by the agency’s lack of knowledge about the safety impact of its 

activities. In fiscal year 2003, the Office of Management and Budget 

identified challenges to program accountability within MCSAP.

The Senate report for the Department of Transportation’s fiscal year 2005 

appropriation directed us to examine the effectiveness of FMCSA’s truck 

safety enforcement activities. Accordingly, and as discussed with Senate 

Appropriations Committee staff members, this report focuses on:

• how FMCSA’s safety enforcement approach, programs, and actions have 

changed since 2000;

• the extent to which FMCSA follows key effective management practices 

in making decisions about its safety enforcement approach; and

• the extent to which FMCSA ensures that its grants to states contribute 

to the agency’s mission of saving lives and reducing injuries by 

preventing truck crashes.

3

For ease of reading, we use FMCSA to refer to the agency under all prior names.
Page 3 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

To examine how FMCSA’s enforcement approaches, programs, and actions 

have changed since 2000, we reviewed legislation and FMCSA regulations, 

program guidance, and plans. We also reviewed congressional reports 

related to the creation of FMCSA, and assessments of the agency’s 

enforcement efforts by the Department of Transportation’s Office of 

Inspector General and by us. We analyzed data from FMCSA on its 

enforcement activities, such as the number of reviews of carrier 

compliance with safety regulations (referred to as “compliance reviews”). 

We also analyzed FMCSA data on enforcement actions, such as civil 

penalties assessed from fiscal year 1995 (before FMCSA committed to be 

more aggressive) through 2004 (the latest full year for which data are 

available). Finally, we discussed these issues with industry and safety 

advocates. 

To determine the extent to which FMCSA follows key effective 

management practices in making decisions about its enforcement 

approach, we determined the extent to which the agency incorporated 

several key elements that are important for effective program management: 

(1) use of program goals, including goals that describe the intended 

outcomes of programs; (2) a well-defined approach for achieving goals; and 

(3) performance measures that demonstrate contributions to program 

goals. We identified elements of effective program management by 

reviewing our reports on this topic, Office of Management and Budget 

guidance, and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. We 

reviewed FMCSA documents about the agency’s activities and plans related 

to each of these elements, and we also interviewed agency officials.

To assess the extent to which FMCSA ensures that its MCSAP grants 

contribute to the agency’s mission, we reviewed regulations and FMCSA 

guidance relating to the design of the grant program. We also discussed 

with FMCSA officials how accountability is built into the grant program. 

We assessed FMCSA’s planning and oversight of seven state MCSAP 

grantees in fiscal year 2004 (the latest full year for which information was 

available), including whether FMCSA obtained sufficient information to be 

able to determine whether grantees substantially met their objectives. We 

then discussed our assessment with FMCSA officials responsible for grant 

activities in those states. The seven states represent about 27 percent of 

MCSAP grant funding in fiscal year 2004. Because we chose these states 

judgmentally (representing the largest grantees), we cannot project our 

findings nationwide. Reviewing a larger number of grantees would not have 

been practical due to resource constraints. 
Page 4 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

As part of our review, we assessed internal controls and the reliability of 

FMCSA’s data on its program activities and enforcement actions that were 

pertinent to this effort. We determined that the data elements were 

sufficiently reliable for our purposes. We conducted our work from 

October 2004 to December 2005 in accordance with generally accepted 

government auditing standards. (See app. I for additional information on 

our scope and methodology.)

Results in Brief FMCSA has increased both its enforcement activities and actions in 

response to criticism in 1999 that it was ineffective at improving safety. The 

agency more than doubled the number of carrier reviews from about 6,400 

in 1998 to about 13,200 in 2000, and increased the average civil penalty per 

violation by more than 80 percent from about $820 to about $1,500 over the 

same time period (in constant 2004 dollars). In the 5 years since FMCSA 

implemented these changes, some of FMCSA’s enforcement activities and 

actions have remained relatively steady, while others have fallen slightly, in 

part because FMCSA’s statutory responsibilities have expanded to include 

conducting homeland security-related reviews of hazardous materials 

carriers and educating new carriers about their responsibilities under the 

safety regulations. FMCSA has also begun to reduce civil penalties for firsttime offenders in cases where the carrier agrees to come into compliance 

and make additional safety-related improvements. At the same time, 

FMCSA officials told us that the agency is committed to applying strict 

enforcement to egregious offenders.

To a large extent, FMCSA follows key effective management practices in 

making decisions about its enforcement approach. For example:

• FMCSA has a well-defined enforcement approach that addresses major 

risk areas that contribute to (or cause) crashes, such as motor carrier 

operations and driver behavior, and targets resources at the motor 

carriers that FMCSA assesses as having the greatest crash risk;

• FMCSA has a broad range of goals and performance measures that it 

uses to provide direction to—and track the performance of—its 

enforcement programs, including measures of the impact of its 

enforcement programs on the level of carrier compliance with safety 

regulations and on the frequency of crashes, injuries, and fatalities; and

• FMCSA has made several refinements to its enforcement programs, 

such as placing more emphasis on drivers during roadside inspections 
Page 5 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

based on preliminary results from a study indicating that driver errors 

contribute to crashes much more frequently than vehicle defects.

FMCSA is also working to obtain additional information on crash risk 

factors, and on the costs and effectiveness of its enforcement programs 

and alternative approaches. This information will help FMCSA further 

refine and set priorities for its programs, thereby addressing deficiencies 

that we identified in 1999 and 2000. Although FMCSA has a broad range of 

goals and performance measures for its enforcement programs, it does not 

measure the effect that one of its key enforcement actions—civil penalties 

against motor carriers—has on carriers’ compliance with safety 

regulations. Civil penalties comprised 81 percent of FMCSA’s enforcement 

actions against motor carriers following compliance reviews—which 

FMCSA considers to be its key enforcement program—during fiscal years 

2002 through 2004. Without a measure of the effectiveness of civil 

penalties, FMCSA does not know whether or how much they are increasing 

carriers’ compliance; therefore it lacks the information needed to make 

sound decisions about any changes to its use of civil penalties.

While MCSAP is designed to ensure that its grants to states contribute to 

the agency’s mission of saving lives and reducing injuries by preventing 

truck crashes, FMCSA’s oversight of state grantees is lacking. MCSAP 

employs a performance-based approach that requires states to analyze 

their commercial vehicle data; target their grant activities to reduce 

crashes, deaths, and injuries; and use performance information to 

demonstrate how safety improvement goals are being met. However, in 

reviewing the safety goals of the seven states that received the largest 

MCSAP grants, we could not determine whether states substantially met 37 

of their 61 goals (61 percent) to improve truck safety. We could not make 

this determination because (1) FMCSA’s grant planning meetings—in which 

it communicates priorities and how to develop plans with quantifiable 

goals—were conducted for about one-fourth of the state grantees in fiscal 

year 2004, and even fewer state grantees had their safety plans reviewed by 

service centers that year; (2) many of the safety goals were missing key 

elements, such as quantifiable performance measures and targets, and 

some safety plans were missing evaluations of whether goals were 

substantially met; and (3) FMCSA division offices that work with states did 

not sufficiently monitor and ensure states’ progress towards safety goals. 

In addition, although FMCSA requires its field division offices, its four 

regional service centers that support division offices, and headquarters to 

periodically review grant program activities for adequacy of oversight 

(among other issues), these reviews are only being partially completed. In 
Page 6 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

this regard, FMCSA division offices reviewed 19 of the 56 state grantees (34 

percent) in the past 3 years. For those division offices that did not conduct 

reviews, reasons included restructuring occurring within the lead agency in 

the state that is responsible for the grant4

 and uncertainty about whether 

conducting smaller “process” reviews fulfilled the state review 

requirement. Furthermore, service centers conducted 15 division office 

reviews (29 percent) and headquarters did not review any service centers 

in the past 3 years. FMCSA did not conduct these reviews for a variety of 

reasons, including a weakened oversight role for service centers, and an 

almost two-thirds reduction in headquarters staffing for MCSAP activities.

We are making several recommendations to improve FMCSA’s ability to 

determine and demonstrate the effectiveness of its enforcement approach, 

and to make adjustments to this approach when needed. For example, we 

are recommending that FMCSA measure the effectiveness of its civil 

penalties against motor carriers. We are also making recommendations to 

improve FMCSA’s oversight of MCSAP grants to help ensure they lead to 

safety improvements. For example, we are recommending that FMCSA 

ensure that existing planning and oversight mechanisms are carried out.

We provided a draft of this report to the Department of Transportation for 

review and comment and received comments from FMCSA officials. 

FMCSA generally agreed with the report’s findings and agreed to consider 

our recommendations. FMCSA offered several corrections, which we 

incorporated in this report.

Background The trucking industry is an important component of the nation’s economy. 

Of all manufactured goods and raw materials shipped across the country, 

close to three-fourths of their value and nearly two-thirds of their tonnage 

are transported by trucks. In 2002, trucks transported more than $6.2 

trillion and 7.8 billion tons of goods and materials (these are the latest data 

available). The increased demand for transporting freight and the 

deregulated nature of the trucking industry have resulted in a growing 

industry. In recent years, the numbers of carriers, trucks, drivers, and 

vehicle miles traveled have been increasing. (See fig. 1.) The motor carrier 

industry comprises approximately 677,000 interstate carriers operating 

some 7.9 million large trucks and employing several million drivers. 

4

The governor of the state designates a lead agency, such as the state police, to carry out 

grant activities, including developing the state’s safety plans.
Page 7 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Carriers frequently enter and exit the industry; in 2004, the industry had a 

net gain of approximately 31,000 interstate carriers.

Figure 1: Growth in the Number of Interstate Motor Carriers, 1995 through 2004

Note: The numbers of carriers are estimates.

There are more fatalities each year resulting from passenger vehicle 

crashes than from truck crashes; however, the likelihood that a fatality will 

occur is greater for crashes that involve large trucks. In 2004, 5,190 

fatalities resulted from large truck crashes while 38,531 fatalities resulted 

from passenger vehicle crashes (based on preliminary data). Although 

large trucks are involved in 4 percent of all accidents, they contribute to 12 

percent of the fatalities. As a result, fatality rates—the number of fatalities 

per 100 million vehicle miles traveled—involving truck crashes are 

consistently higher when compared to passenger-vehicle-only crashes. (See 

fig. 2.)

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Number in thousands

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.
Page 8 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 2: Fatality Rates Involving Large Truck and Passenger Vehicle Crashes, 1995 

through 2004

Note: Fatality rates for 2004 are based on preliminary data.

Large-truck fatality rates have generally been falling since the mid-1990s—

from 2.76 in 1995 to 2.29 in 2004 (based on preliminary data). Although 

there has been a reduction in the fatality rate, the number of fatalities has 

increased in each of the last two years, reaching 5,190 in 2004. According to 

FMCSA, truck crashes result in costs totaling more than $20 billion 

annually.

In an attempt to reduce the number and severity of crashes involving large 

trucks, FMCSA was created by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act 

of 1999. FMCSA assumed almost all of the responsibilities and personnel of 

the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Motor Carriers. The 

agency’s primary mission is to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities 

involving large trucks by (1) issuing, administering, and enforcing federal 

motor carrier safety regulations and hazardous materials regulations; (2) 

providing education and outreach for motor carriers and drivers regarding 

the federal motor carrier safety regulations and hazardous materials 

regulations; (3) gathering and analyzing data on motor carriers, drivers, and 

Year

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA and Federal Highway Administration data.

Truck fatality rate

Passenger vehicle fatality rate

Fatality rate

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Page 9 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

vehicles; (4) developing information systems to improve the transfer of 

data; and (5) researching new methods and technologies to enhance motor 

carrier safety. 

FMCSA’s goal is to reduce the fatality rate for crashes involving trucks by 

41 percent between 1996 and 2008, from 2.81 to 1.65 fatalities per 100 

million vehicle miles traveled. FMCSA was on track to meet this goal 

through 2002, when the fatality rate of 2.30 was slightly below the agency’s 

interim target of 2.32. However, the 2003 fatality rate of 2.31 was higher 

than the agency’s interim target of 2.19, and in 2004 the gap between the 

fatality rate (based on preliminary data)—2.29—and the agency’s interim 

target—2.07—grew. FMCSA has an additional goal to reduce the number of 

serious, reportable hazardous materials incidents involving trucks by 20 

percent (from 463 to 370) between 2000 and 2010.5

FMCSA programs are intended to contribute to these goals by addressing 

safety in motor carrier operations through identifying and enforcing safety 

regulations that target high-risk carriers and large-commercial-truck 

drivers, improving safety information systems and commercial motor 

vehicle technologies, strengthening commercial motor vehicle equipment 

and operating standards, and increasing safety awareness. Although each 

of these activities plays a role in FMCSA’s overall safety approach, FMCSA 

considers enforcement to be its primary approach for reducing the number 

of crashes, fatalities, and injuries involving trucks. Most of FMCSA’s 

enforcement programs focus on two parties that greatly influence the 

safety of truck operations—motor carriers and truck drivers. (See table 1.) 

In each fiscal year from 1996 through 2004, FMCSA, on average, initiated 

3,800 enforcement cases against motor carriers following compliance 

reviews, and FMCSA and its MCSAP partners placed, on average, about 

180,000 drivers and about 450,000 vehicles out of service following 

roadside inspections. In addition to its traditional enforcement approach, 

FMCSA, in conjunction with the National Highway Traffic Safety 

Administration, recently funded a pilot program in Washington state that 

combined education and enforcement with the purpose of improving the 

driving behavior of passenger-vehicle drivers when in the vicinity of trucks.

5

Based on data provided by FMCSA, we estimated that the economic impact resulting from 

crashes and incidents involving hazardous-materials vehicles was less than 5 percent of the 

total economic impact of truck crashes. Therefore, this report focuses on truck safety 

enforcement programs and not hazardous materials safety enforcement programs.
Page 10 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Table 1: FMCSA’s Enforcement Programs

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

a

Prior to the pilot program, Share the Road Safely relied solely on education to increase the safety of 

passenger vehicle drivers.

In addition, FMCSA has several information systems and a program to help 

it identify high-risk carriers and drivers and to assist it in enforcing safety 

regulations.6

• The Safety Status Measurement System evaluates the safety of carriers 

by analyzing four broad categories—accidents, drivers, vehicles, and 

safety management—and assigns an overall score to the carrier. FMCSA 

then targets its compliance reviews at carriers that pose the greatest 

risk. 

Program Description

Commercial carriers

Compliance reviews On-site reviews of carriers’ records and operations to determine compliance with safety regulations that 

address areas such as alcohol and drug testing of drivers, insurance, crashes, driver qualifications, drivers’ 

hours of service, vehicle maintenance and inspections, and transportation of hazardous materials.

New entrant safety audits Audits conducted on new interstate carriers within their first 18 months of registration to ensure that they are 

knowledgeable about the safety regulations prior to receiving permanent registration. Although the emphasis 

of new entrant safety audits is on education, FMCSA can apply enforcement actions when new entrants are 

found to not be in compliance with safety regulations.

Border safety audits Audits conducted on all Mexican-domiciled carriers within their first 18 months of registration to certify that 

they are following safety practice and performance guidelines prior to receiving permanent certificates of 

registration.

Commercial vehicles and drivers

Roadside inspections Inspections of drivers or vehicles conducted at the roadside to determine compliance with safety regulations 

that address such areas as driver’s license, alcohol and drug use, hours of service, brakes, turn signals, head 

lights, and tires.

Traffic enforcement Enforcement against truck drivers who violate traffic safety laws.

Passenger vehicle drivers 

Share the Road Safelya A pilot program in Washington state that combines education and enforcement activities to increase the 

safety of passenger vehicle drivers when driving in proximity to commercial vehicles.

6

These information systems and program support FMCSA’s enforcement activities and 

actions, such as targeting carriers for inspection. Because they are not enforcement 

activities, per se, we did not review their effectiveness.
Page 11 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

• The Performance and Registration Information Systems Management 

program (PRISM), a grant-funded program, is a federal and state 

cooperative effort that, by revoking or denying registration of carriers’ 

vehicles, aims to ensure that carriers placed out of service by FMCSA do 

not operate.

• The Enforcement Management Information System is a database used 

by FMCSA to monitor, track, and store information related to 

enforcement actions.

• The Motor Carrier Management Information System is an information 

system used by FMCSA as a central repository to compile inspection, 

crash, compliance review, safety audit, and registration data. 

• Gotham is a web-based system that compiles information from the 

Motor Carrier Management Information System, the Enforcement 

Management Information System, and field offices to supply 

information and performance measures to field managers.

When FMCSA discovers a violation of the safety regulations, it may use one 

of several enforcement actions depending on the nature of the violation. 

(See table 2.) An enforcement action may require the violating party to 

correct the unsafe practice or operation, pay a civil penalty, or suspend 

operations. 

Table 2: FMCSA’s Enforcement Actions

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

FMCSA has approximately 1,050 full-time equivalent employees, of which 

nearly 850 work at 52 division offices throughout the U.S. and its 

territories. The division offices oversee 56 MCSAP grantees—one grantee 

in each of the fifty states, one in the District of Columbia, and one each in 

Enforcement action Description

Compliance order Directs a carrier to comply with the safety regulations. 

Civil penalty Imposes a monetary penalty on a carrier that violates a safety regulation.

Out-of-service order Orders a driver or vehicle out of service for posing an imminent hazard to safety, or orders a carrier to 

cease all or part of its operation for having imminently hazardous conditions or operations, or for 

being unfit.

Order-to-cease operations Prohibits a carrier from operating in interstate commerce for failing to pay a civil penalty assessed by 

FMCSA.
Page 12 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas, 

Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.7 Much of the work carried out in the 

field involves conducting reviews either at the roadside or at a carrier’s 

place of business. For fiscal year 2006, FMCSA was appropriated $501 

million. Over half of these funds are slated for distribution to states in the 

form of grants, the largest under MCSAP.

MCSAP provides financial assistance to states to reduce commercial motor 

vehicle-involved accidents, fatalities, and injuries through consistent, 

uniform, and effective commercial motor vehicle safety activities. Initially, 

MCSAP primarily funded state roadside inspections as a method of 

improving commercial motor vehicle safety. However, the program has 

evolved over the past two decades to fund several other safety initiatives in 

support of its goal, including compliance reviews, traffic enforcement, new 

entrant safety audits, border grants, and other safety initiatives.8

 The 

recently-enacted Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation 

Equity Act: A Legacy for Users authorized an average annual funding level 

of $200 million for MCSAP—more than twice the amount available in the 

previous authorization. 

The responsibility for the administration and the oversight of MCSAP is 

shared among the various levels of FMCSA. Division offices in each state 

have the primary responsibility for overseeing state programs. They work 

closely with the states to develop commercial vehicle safety plans and 

monitor the states’ activities to ensure program goals are being met, and 

are also responsible for ensuring that grant funds are spent for 

reimbursable expenses. MCSAP responsibilities of the regional service 

centers and headquarters differ from those of the division offices. The 

service centers act as an intermediary between the division office and 

headquarters. They assist in clarifying policy for the division offices and 

they organize training and goal-setting meetings related to the grant 

program. Headquarters responsibilities center on establishing and 

communicating agency priorities for MCSAP, issuing and updating MCSAP 

policy guidance, and carrying out financial management activities. 

7

In this report, we refer to all MCSAP grantees as “states.”

8

These other safety initiatives include the Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and 

Networks program, PRISM program, and Intelligent Transportation Systems for Commercial 

Vehicle Operations program. MCSAP used to fund border grants. However, in fiscal year 

2005, FMCSA created a separate program to fund border grants.
Page 13 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

FMCSA’s Enforcement 

Programs and Actions 

Have Been Stronger 

Since 2000

In response to criticisms in 1999 that its enforcement programs were 

ineffective at improving safety, FMCSA has strengthened its enforcement 

approach. Its enforcement approach has evolved to supplement strong 

enforcement with additional measures to encourage carriers to comply 

with safety regulations.

FMCSA Committed to a 

Stronger Enforcement 

Approach

During the 1990s, FMCSA believed that adopting a partnering approach 

with the trucking industry—marked by an increased emphasis on 

education and less emphasis on traditional enforcement programs—would 

lead to improved large truck safety. However, while implementing this 

approach, the fatality rate from crashes involving large trucks continued to 

increase. The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General criticized 

FMCSA in a report stating that the approach was ineffective and that the 

agency needed to emphasize traditional enforcement programs.9

 Moreover, 

we reported then that FMCSA lacked an understanding of the effectiveness 

of its enforcement programs.10

In response to the criticism, FMCSA publicly committed to strengthen its 

enforcement approach by committing to increase its emphasis on 

enforcement programs and actions. Through the Transportation Equity Act 

for the 21st Century in 1998 and the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act 

of 1999, Congress broadened the government’s enforcement authority, 

allowing it to implement this new emphasis. This legislation made it easier 

for FMCSA to revoke carriers’ operating authority. Furthermore, the 

legislation increased the allowable civil penalty from $1,000 to $10,000 for 

certain violations.

Subsequently, the agency has come to believe that combining strict 

enforcement with education and outreach will lead to greater 

improvements in safety. This approach seeks to identify higher risk 

operators and apply education and enforcement where needed. For 

example, the agency has a program—geared toward new entrants to the 

9

U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, Motor Carrier Safety 

Program, Federal Highway Administration, TR-1999-091 (Washington, D.C.: April 26, 

1999).

10GAO, Commercial Motor Vehicles: Effectiveness of Actions Being Taken to Improve 

Motor Carrier Safety is Unknown, GAO/RCED-00-189 (Washington, D.C.: July 17, 2000).
Page 14 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

industry—to encourage awareness of the federal motor carrier safety 

regulations. However, FMCSA officials told us that the agency is committed 

to applying strict enforcement to egregious offenders who demonstrate 

non-compliance with the regulations or unsafe driving practices. FMCSA 

has also made progress in assessing the effects of its enforcement 

programs on safety in terms of reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities. We 

discuss these efforts in more detail below.

Finally, FMCSA has restructured its organization to allow enforcement and 

education programs to work more closely together. For example, FMCSA 

moved the program manager for education and outreach from the Office of 

Communications to the Office of Enforcement and Program Delivery in 

order to increase collaboration between FMCSA’s education and 

enforcement staff. FMCSA officials have emphasized that although they are 

taking steps to increase the role of education, they do not plan to return to 

the partnering approach—i.e., in which education is the primary focus—

that characterized the mid-1990s.

FMCSA’s Programs Have 

Mirrored Its Stronger 

Enforcement Approach

The number of compliance reviews was higher in 2004 than in 1998. 

Before the creation of FMCSA, the number of compliance reviews 

conducted dropped 31 percent between fiscal years 1995 and 1998—from 

approximately 9,200 to 6,400. (See fig. 3.) Demonstrating its commitment in 

1999 to follow a stronger enforcement approach, FMCSA set and met its 

goal of doubling the number of compliance reviews. In this respect, the 

number of compliance reviews more than doubled from approximately 

6,400 in 1998 to more than 13,400 in 2001.11 The number of compliance 

reviews began to decrease in fiscal year 2002, largely as the result of 

additional homeland security responsibilities to review hazardous 

materials carriers in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks 

on the United States. The agency completed almost 31,000 homeland 

security-related visits in fiscal year 2002. The number of these visits 

decreased to less than 2,000 in fiscal year 2003, when FMCSA began 

targeting the reviews at the most vulnerable carriers as identified by the 

agency’s risk assessment.

11In assessing FMCSA’s actions, we used 1998 data as the benchmark for the partnering 

approach because this is the last year of data before the Department of Transportation’s 

Inspector General released its report criticizing FMCSA.
Page 15 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 3: Number of Compliance Reviews Conducted and Percentage of the Motor 

Carrier Industry Receiving Compliance Reviews, 1995 through 2004

Another factor affecting FMCSA’s ability to conduct compliance reviews 

was its responsibility for implementing the new entrant audit program in 

2003. From fiscal year 2003 through August 2005, FMCSA conducted almost 

54,500 new entrant audits. Despite these additional responsibilities of 

conducting visits of hazardous materials carriers and new entrants, the 

agency has still conducted more compliance reviews than were carried out 

in the late 1990s. In 2004, the agency conducted approximately 11,300 

compliance reviews, 77 percent more than in fiscal year 1998. 

Despite an increase in the number of compliance reviews, the agency has 

still been unable to review a larger proportion of the industry’s carriers. 

This is because the industry has grown faster than has FMCSA’s ability to 

conduct compliance reviews. (See figs. 1 and 3.)

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

16,000

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Number Percentage

Fiscal year

Number of compliance reviews

Percent of carriers

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

FMCSA

created

FMCSA

implemented

new homeland

security responsibilities

New entrant 

audits began
Page 16 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

• In 1995, FMCSA performed about 9,200 compliance reviews, reaching 

about 2.7 percent of the nation’s estimated 350,000 carriers.12

• In 1998, when FMCSA conducted its lowest number of compliance 

reviews—about 6,400—the industry had grown almost 40 percent to an 

estimated 480,000 carriers. As a result, FMCSA’s compliance reviews 

covered only about 1.3 percent of the industry.

• Then, in 2000, as FMCSA doubled the number of compliance reviews, 

the number of carriers increased by almost 80,000 from the 1998 level, 

resulting in 2.4 percent of carriers receiving compliance reviews in 2000.

• In fiscal year 2004, FMCSA reviewed about 1.7 percent of the carriers—a 

smaller proportion than the proportion reviewed in the mid-1990s—

despite increasing the number of compliance reviews by 77 percent 

from the late 1990s. This is because the trucking industry had continued 

to grow steadily to about 677,000 carriers in 2004.

In fiscal year 2005, FMCSA expressed its intent to once again increase the 

number of compliance reviews. As discussed in more detail later in this 

report, FMCSA is also exploring potential changes to its compliance review 

program, in part because it is concerned that the program reaches only 

about 2 percent of carriers each year.

Roadside inspections have also increased. In the late 1990s, FMCSA 

and the states continued to increase the number of roadside inspections, 

even as compliance reviews were decreasing. During that time period, 

FMCSA and states nearly doubled the number of roadside inspections 

conducted from 1.3 million to 2.3 million.13 (See fig. 4.) The number of 

roadside inspections increased steadily through 2000, when FMCSA and 

state inspectors conducted about 2.5 million inspections. In its fiscal year 

2005 and 2006 budgets, FMCSA set its goal for roadside inspections at 2 

million—about 1 million less than were conducted in 2004—bringing the 

number of expected roadside inspections back to pre-2000 levels. 

According to an FMCSA official, FMCSA set these lower goals in 2005 and 

2006 with the anticipation that the number of roadside inspections would 

12Not all carriers are required to be reviewed every year.

13Until 1998, state staff conducted all roadside inspections with partial support from federal 

funds. FMCSA has conducted an increasing number of inspections using its own staff; 

however, state staff still conduct more than 95 percent of all inspections.
Page 17 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

decrease as states shifted resources from roadside inspections to conduct 

increasing numbers of audits of new entrant carriers. However, the 

anticipated decrease in roadside inspections did not occur because some 

states hired additional staff to conduct the audits of new entrants and 

therefore did not have to use their roadside inspection staff to conduct 

these audits. An FMCSA official also told us that the agency is no longer 

seeking to increase the annual number of roadside inspections based on its 

analysis indicating that the inspection program is no longer leading to 

annual increases in the industry-wide level of compliance with safety 

regulations.

Figure 4: Roadside Inspections Conducted and Planned, 1996 through 2006 

Note: 1995 data are not included because FMCSA determined that they are not reliable. FMCSA does 

not control the total number of inspections conducted; states may choose to do more inspections.

FMCSA intends to make new entrant audits more enforcementoriented. The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act established the new 

entrant audit program to educate carriers that are new to the industry 

about safety regulations and encourage their compliance. This act was in 

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

3,500,000

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Number

Fiscal year

Conducted Inspections

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

FMCA's 2005 and 2006 goals
Page 18 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

response to a 1988 FMCSA-commissioned study that pointed to a higher 

rate of violations of safety regulations and higher crash rates among 

carriers that had recently entered the motor carrier industry. In fiscal year 

2003, the agency began implementing the new entrant audit program and 

conducted 7,000 audits. As FMCSA fully implemented the program in 2004, 

this number increased to more than 25,000.

FMCSA believes that in the audit’s current form, the “pass rate” does not 

accurately reflect new entrant carriers’ level of safety. Currently, carriers 

can fail one-third of the audit sections and still pass the audit, resulting in a 

pass rate of more than 99 percent.14 FMCSA plans to improve the program 

by employing stricter criteria for carriers and increasing the threshold for 

carriers to pass, demonstrating the agency’s approach of using strict 

enforcement where needed. The agency plans to publish a proposed 

regulation for public comment in March 2006.

FMCSA’s Enforcement 

Actions Have Increased

FMCSA has initiated more enforcement cases and identified higher 

numbers of serious violations. FMCSA calculates a “rate of 

enforcement,” which is the percent of compliance reviews that result in an 

enforcement case. Since 2000, the rate of enforcement has increased from 

30 percent to 46 percent of compliance reviews. (See fig. 5.) Further, the 

number of serious violations (FMCSA calls these “acute violations”) that 

FMCSA has identified is consistently higher than in the 1990s. In 1998, the 

agency identified approximately 710 serious violations of the regulations. 

This number increased by 64 percent to approximately 1,160 violations in 

2000. The number of serious violations peaked in 2003 when FMCSA 

identified more than 1,800 violations. 

According to an FMCSA official, the increase in the number of serious 

violations identified resulted from FMCSA’s improved targeting of 

compliance reviews of high-risk carriers. In 2004, the number dropped to 

about 1,500—out of about 14,800 total violations—but was still more than 

double the 1998 number.

14We are assessing FMCSA’s new entrant audit program as part of a separate study which we 

expect to issue shortly.
Page 19 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 5: Number of Serious Violations Found and Rate of Enforcement, 1995 

through 2004 

FMCSA has applied its authority to place carriers out of service. 

Between 2001 and 2004, the number of carriers prohibited from operating 

increased from about 170 to about 1,700. (See fig. 6.) Before 2001, FMCSA 

prohibited motor carriers from operating if the agency found that the 

carrier posed an imminent hazard. FMCSA has explained that because the 

definition of “imminent hazard status” was vague and limited in scope, the 

agency ordered very few motor carriers to cease operating. In 2001, based 

on authorities given it by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act, 

FMCSA began prohibiting carriers from operating if they failed to correct 

operational problems or pay a civil penalty.

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

1,400

1,600

1,800

2,000

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Fiscal year

Number

Rate

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

Number Percentage
Page 20 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 6: Number of Carriers Prohibited from Operating in Interstate Commerce by 

FMCSA, 1995 through 2004 

Note: This includes carriers that are closed as a result of both violations to the regulations and failure 

to pay assessed civil penalties.

The size of proposed civil penalties was higher in 2004 than in 

1998.15 From 1995 through 1998, the average civil penalty proposed for 

each violation decreased by 10 percent from $910 in 1995 to $820 in 1998.16

(See fig. 7. All amounts are in 2004 dollars.) A key criticism by the 

Department of Transportation’s Inspector General during that time was 

that carriers had begun to see these civil penalties as little more than a cost 

15FMCSA uses a tool to help it determine the dollar amounts of its civil penalties. The tool 

uses nine criteria that consider the gravity of the violation and offense history of the carrier 

to develop recommendations for civil penalties. There have been statutory changes to this 

tool over the past decade. In 1998 and 2003, the agency adjusted all civil penalties for 

inflation. Further, in 1999, legislation created new categories of violations, which increased 

the allowable civil penalty for more serious violations to $10,000 and decreased the 

allowable civil penalty for record keeping violations.

16FMCSA and state staff typically found more than one violation per enforcement case. The 

average penalty per enforcement case was approximately $3,700 higher than the average 

penalty per violation for each year. 

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Number

Fiscal year

FMCSA implements new

authorities to prohibit

carriers from operating 

in interstate commerce

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

250

750

1,250

1,750
Page 21 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

of doing business. In response, FMCSA pledged to levy larger civil penalties 

and, in 1999, implemented the authorities that Congress gave the agency. 

From 1998 to 2000, the average civil penalty levied per violation increased 

by more than 80 percent to almost $1,500. In recent years, FMCSA has 

modified its view of civil penalties, citing that they are only one tool to 

reach compliance. Accordingly, the average civil penalty for each violation 

has dropped slightly to approximately $1,400 in 2004, but this represents a 

drop of about 3 percent and does not bring the amount of civil penalties 

back to the levels of the late 1990s. While the civil penalties have been 

higher since 2000, the agency still has considerable latitude under law to 

assess larger civil penalties.17 As discussed later in this report, FMCSA does 

not know whether or how much its civil penalties are increasing carriers’ 

compliance, and therefore the agency has a limited ability to determine 

whether the dollar amounts of the penalties are at the most effective levels. 

17Civil penalties for non-record keeping violations may be imposed up to $10,000 per 

violation. In 2004, the average civil penalty for these violations was slightly more than 

$2,000.
Page 22 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 7: Average Civil Penalty Assessed per Violation, by Type of Violation, Fiscal 

Years 1995 through 2004 (In 2004 Dollars)

Note: Numbers may differ from those reported by FMCSA because they have been adjusted for 

inflation. The category of non-recordkeeping violations did not exist before 1998.

FMCSA has assessed higher civil penalties for more serious offenses. The 

agency has four categories of violations: acute, critical, non-record 

keeping, and record keeping.18 

• Acute violations are so severe that FMCSA will require immediate 

corrective actions by a motor carrier regardless of the overall safety 

status of the motor carrier. An example of an acute violation is a carrier 

failing to implement an alcohol or drug testing program for drivers. 

18Violation types are not mutually exclusive; a violation can be both acute and non-record 

keeping.

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Fiscal year

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.

Changes to uniform

fine assessment tool

Dollar amount per penalty

Civil penalty per all violations

Civil penalty per acute violation

Civil penalty per non-recordkeeping violation

Civil penalty per recordkeeping violation

Civil penalty per critical violation
Page 23 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

• Critical violations are serious, but less severe than acute violations and 

most often point to gaps in carrier management or operational controls, 

such as not maintaining records of driver medical certificates. 

• Non-record keeping violations are related directly to driver or carrier 

actions. An example is a driver operating a motor carrier under the 

influence of drugs or alcohol. 

• Record keeping violations involve a driver or carrier failing to maintain 

required documentation. An example of a record keeping violation is 

failure of the carrier to maintain a record of all accidents for one year.

In line with FMCSA’s commitment to stricter enforcement for more serious 

violations, since 2000, acute violations, which FMCSA identifies as the 

most serious violation, and non-record keeping violations have been 

assessed penalties that are about five times higher than record keeping 

violations, as shown in figure 7. Further, the average civil penalty per 

violation of critical violations has consistently been more than twice the 

average civil penalty per record keeping violation. 

We also assessed the degree to which FMCSA reduced its initial civil 

penalty assessment.19 We found that the average final assessment has been 

80 percent or more of the initial assessment during this past decade.20 (See 

fig. 8.) Further, since 2000, the first fiscal year after FMCSA promised to be 

stronger on enforcement, acute violations were reduced slightly less than 

overall violations.

19FMCSA may reduce a civil penalty in cases where the motor carrier presents evidence to 

refute the violations found during the compliance review or offers mitigating circumstances 

to explain why the violations occurred.

20This finding is not consistent with the 1999 report from the Department of Transportation’s 

Inspector General. The Inspector General found that final assessments were substantially 

less than initial assessments from 1995 through 1998. This discrepancy may be due to 

different methodologies. Among other things, the Inspector General looked at a sample of 

cases, whereas we reviewed all enforcement cases.
Page 24 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 8: Final Assessment as Compared to Initial Assessment, Fiscal Years 1995 

through 2004

In recent years, FMCSA has applied a new approach to civil penalties. With 

first-time offenders and other carriers with less serious violations, FMCSA 

has reduced civil penalties in cases where the carrier agrees to come into 

compliance and make additional safety-related improvements. The agency 

has specified that any carrier receiving a reduction in its civil penalty must 

remain in compliance for several years. If the carrier violates safety rules 

again, it is then responsible for paying the entire originally assessed civil 

penalty or FMCSA will place the carrier out of service. FMCSA does not 

currently maintain information on the subpopulation of first time 

offenders, and therefore it has not assessed the results of this new policy. 

In November 2005, FMCSA began issuing and tracking notices to first-time 

offenders and other carriers with less serious violations that describe the 

violations and the corrective actions required, without assessing a civil 

penalty. This tracking should give FMCSA the ability to assess the results of 

the policy.

0

20

40

60

80

100

Acute violations

All violations

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Percentage

Fiscal year

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA data.
Page 25 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

FMCSA Has a WellDefined Enforcement 

Approach and Has 

Efforts Underway to 

Help It Refine and Set 

Priorities for Its 

Enforcement Programs

To a large extent, FMCSA follows key effective management practices in 

making decisions about its enforcement approach. FMCSA’s enforcement 

approach addresses major risk factors that contribute to or cause crashes, 

and FMCSA targets its enforcement resources at the motor carriers that it 

assesses as having the greatest crash risk. FMCSA has a broad range of 

goals and performance measures that it uses to provide direction to—and 

track the performance of—its enforcement programs, but it does not have 

a measure of the effectiveness of one of its primary enforcement actions: 

civil penalties against motor carriers. FMCSA has made several 

refinements to its enforcement programs based on agency studies of 

factors that affect crash risk and on evaluations of the effectiveness of the 

programs themselves. FMCSA is also working to obtain additional 

information on crash risk factors, and on the costs and effectiveness of its 

enforcement programs, needed to help it further refine and set priorities 

for the programs.

FMCSA’s Enforcement 

Approach Addresses Many 

of the Major Factors that 

Cause or Contribute to 

Truck Crashes and Targets 

High-Risk Carriers

FMCSA’s enforcement approach includes goals and programs that address 

many of the major factors that cause or contribute to truck crashes. (See 

table 3.) For example, motor carrier operations—including hiring unsafe 

drivers and inadequate vehicle maintenance practices—have been 

identified as one of a number of interacting factors that can contribute to 

crashes. To address this, FMCSA conducts compliance reviews of motor 

carriers’ operations and takes enforcement actions against carriers found 

to have violations of the safety regulations. FMCSA also addresses vehicle 

condition and driver factors (such as fatigue) by conducting roadside 

inspections of drivers and their trucks. Another factor that has been 

identified is unsafe driving by passenger-vehicle drivers in the vicinity of 

trucks. To address this factor, FMCSA and the National Highway Traffic 

Safety Administration are jointly funding a pilot program in Washington 

state in 2005 to educate passenger-vehicle drivers about how to drive safely 

in the vicinity of trucks and to take enforcement action against drivers who 

drive unsafely.21

21Prior to this pilot program, FMCSA’s efforts to improve the driving behavior of passenger 

vehicle drivers in the vicinity of trucks, which it initiated in 1994, were solely educational in 

nature; they did not involve an enforcement component. See GAO, Truck Safety: Share the 

Road Safely Program Needs Better Evaluation of Its Initiatives, GAO-03-680 (Washington, 

D.C.: May 30, 2003). In the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: 

A Legacy for Users, Congress required us to update this study by June 30, 2006.
Page 26 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Table 3: How FMCSA’s Enforcement Approach Addresses Many of the Major Factors 

that Cause or Contribute to Truck Crashes

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA information.

a

This program currently emphasizes education of motor carriers over enforcement, but FMCSA intends 

to increase the enforcement emphasis of the program.

Because FMCSA’s resources do not allow it to conduct compliance reviews 

of each of the estimated 677,000 motor carriers and roadside inspections of 

each of the industry’s millions of vehicles and drivers, FMCSA’s 

enforcement approach targets high-risk carriers and their vehicles and 

drivers. As discussed above, FMCSA uses information about carriers’ safety 

performance (including crash history and results of roadside inspections 

and compliance reviews) to identify unsafe carriers that it then targets for 

additional compliance reviews; many states also use the information to 

FMCSA’s enforcement approach

Major factor that causes 

or contributes to truck 

crashes Goal Program

Motor carrier operations Improve the safety 

performance of high-risk 

carriers

Compliance reviews; 

PRISM

Improve the safety 

performance of new entrant 

carriers

Safety audits of new entrant 

carriersa

Ensure that Mexican 

carriers operating in the 

U.S. comply with safety 

regulations

Safety audits of Mexican 

carriers

Truck driver performance Ensure that all commercial 

motor vehicle drivers are 

fully qualified, safe, alert, 

and healthy

Roadside inspections; traffic 

enforcement

Vehicle performance Ensure that commercial 

motor vehicles have 

optimum safety 

performance

Roadside inspections

Passenger-vehicle driver 

performance

Improve the safety and 

performance of noncommercial drivers with 

respect to trucks

Share the Road Safely
Page 27 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

target their roadside inspections of drivers and their trucks.22 Because 

carriers that have drivers with more convictions tend to have higher crash 

rates, FMCSA is working to incorporate these driver conviction histories 

into its targeting system.

FMCSA Has a Broad Range 

of Enforcement Goals and 

Performance Measures but 

It Does Not Measure the 

Effectiveness of Its Civil 

Penalties

FMCSA has a broad range of goals and related performance measures that 

it uses to provide direction to—and track the progress of—its enforcement 

programs, but it does not measure the effect that one of its key 

enforcement actions—civil penalties against motor carriers—has on 

carriers’ compliance with safety regulations. Without such a performance 

measure, FMCSA does not know whether or how much its civil penalties 

are increasing carriers’ compliance, and it lacks the information needed to 

make sound decisions about any changes to its use of civil penalties.

FMCSA’s budget request for fiscal year 2006 includes a “logic model” that 

describes how its enforcement programs are expected to result in the 

desired end outcome of reductions in truck crashes, injuries, and 

fatalities.23 (See fig. 9.) The model follows one type of structure for such 

models, in which outputs (in this case, enforcement activities and actions) 

result in intermediate outcomes (increased compliance with safety 

regulations), which in turn result in end outcomes (increased safety).

22In February 2004, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General reported that, 

among other data quality problems, incomplete crash reporting and late or incomplete 

roadside inspection reporting by states adversely affect the reliability of FMCSA’s carrier 

rankings. See U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, 

Improvements Needed in the Motor Carrier Safety Status Measurement System, MH-2004-

034 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 13, 2004). In October 2004, Oak Ridge National Laboratory 

reported that while FMCSA’s targeting tool is about twice as effective as random selection in 

identifying high-risk carriers, about 90 percent of the carriers that the tool identifies as 

“high-risk” are identified due to random variations in the underlying data rather than 

because they are consistently high-risk carriers. See Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Review 

of the Motor Carrier Safety Status Measurement System (SafeStat) (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: Oct. 

2004). FMCSA has taken some steps to address concerns about its targeting tool. We 

recently reported on FMCSA’s efforts to improve the quality of its crash data; see GAO, 

Highway Safety: Further Opportunities Exist to Improve Data on Crashes Involving 

Commercial Motor Vehicles, GAO-06-102 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 18, 2005).

23We have suggested that regulatory programs develop logic models to better understand 

how their programs deliver results in order to select appropriate goals. See GAO, Managing 

for Results: Strengthening Regulatory Agencies’ Performance Management Practices, 

GAO/GGD-00-10 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 28, 1999).
Page 28 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Figure 9: Logic Model of How FMCSA’s Enforcement Approach Contributes to Truck 

Safety

For each component of its enforcement program logic model—outputs, 

intermediate outcomes, and end outcomes—FMCSA has various goals and 

performance measures. (See table 4.) The Government Performance and 

Results Act of 1993 calls for agencies to establish goals, including outcome 

goals, and performance measures for both outputs and outcomes, and we 

have reported that it is a useful practice for federal programs to set 

intermediate outcome goals in order to help show a program’s contribution 

to desired end outcomes.24 FMCSA describes some of its enforcement goals 

and performance measures in its annual budget requests that it submits to 

Congress, and it describes some of its other enforcement goals and 

performance measures in its 2003 report entitled Measuring the FMCSA’s 

Safety Objectives from Year 2000 to 2002. FMCSA intends to update this 

report annually beginning in February 2006. In addition, FMCSA reports its 

progress on several of its enforcement performance measures in a 

quarterly progress report that it posts on its Web site. Finally, FMCSA uses 

an information system to internally track several performance measures 

related to its management of enforcement cases.

24See GAO, Agency Performance Plans: Examples of Practices That Can Improve 

Usefulness to Decisionmakers, GAO/GGD/AIMD-99-69 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 26, 1999).

Enforcement activities

and actions, such as

compliance reviews, 

roadside inspections, 

out-of-service 

orders, and 

civil penalties

Increased compliance 

with safety regulations

Save lives and reduce 

injuries by reducing 

truck crashes

Program outputs Intermediate outcome End outcome

CRASHES

Source: GAO adaptation of FMCA presentation.
Page 29 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Table 4: Examples of FMCSA’s Enforcement Program Goals and Performance Measures

Source: GAO analysis of FMCSA information.

a

Although the goal suggests that FMCSA could use a numerical measure of the safety performance of 

well-performing motor carriers as a target level of performance for the worst offending motor carriers, 

the agency does not do so.

FMCSA has output goals for its enforcement programs that specify how 

many of certain types of activities, such as compliance reviews and 

roadside inspections, it intends to complete. FMCSA also tracks many 

performance measures related to its use of enforcement actions, such as 

the number of vehicles, drivers, and motor carriers it places out of service; 

the number and average dollar amount of civil penalties that it assesses 

against motor carriers; and the average dollar amount of civil penalties that 

have been reduced during FMCSA’s negotiations with carriers. FMCSA 

does not set goals linked to these performance measures because it 

believes that such goals could bias the decisions of enforcement personnel. 

We agree that such goals could result in undesirable behavior.

Goal

Goal is 

numerically 

specified Performance measure(s)

Output

Complete 10,000 federally conducted 

compliance reviews of motor carriers in 

fiscal year 2006

Yes Number of federally conducted compliance reviews of motor carriers 

completed

Reduce the agency’s backlog of 

enforcement cases

No Number of enforcement cases that have remained open for 6 months or 

more

Intermediate outcome

Increase the safety performance of the 

worst offending motor carriers to meet 

the norm

Noa FMCSA’s performance measures for this goal include:

• For poor-performing motor carriers collectively, a numerical rating 

based on the frequency and severity of violations of driver-related 

acute or critical regulations cited at compliance reviews

• Percentage of carriers previously rated “conditional” that improve their 

rating to “satisfactory” on a follow-up compliance review

Ensure that all commercial motor vehicle 

drivers are fully qualified, safe, alert, and 

healthy

No FMCSA’s performance measures for this goal include:

• Percentage of inspections that resulted in a driver being placed out of 

service

• Number of driver out-of-service violations per inspection, with more 

recent violations receiving more weight and a penalty applied for 

instances in which drivers were found to be violating out-of-service 

orders

End outcome

Reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities 

by conducting compliance reviews

No Number of crashes, injuries, and fatalities avoided by conducting 

compliance reviews
Page 30 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

FMCSA has set an output goal related to another aspect of its enforcement 

actions—how long it takes the agency to close its enforcement cases.25 In 

May 1999, FMCSA set a goal of eliminating by January 1, 2000, the backlog 

of 1,200 enforcement cases that had been forwarded by one of FMCSA’s 

regional offices to FMCSA’s headquarters office.26 As the Department of 

Transportation’s Inspector General has noted, a large backlog undermines 

the integrity of the enforcement process, since (1) FMCSA considers only 

closed enforcement cases when targeting motor carriers for a compliance 

review, and therefore high-risk motor carriers are less likely to be selected 

if they have an open enforcement case, and (2) FMCSA assesses smaller 

civil penalties against carriers with open cases than those with closed 

cases, and therefore it may not assess appropriate civil penalty amounts 

against carriers with multiple enforcement cases. FMCSA did not meet its 

goal of eliminating the backlog of cases in headquarters, but it did reduce 

the backlog by a commendable 70 percent—to 363 cases in September 

1999. As of October 2005, the backlog in headquarters stood at 140 cases, 

and the service centers that replaced FMCSA’s regional offices had an 

additional combined backlog of 667 cases. Reducing these backlogs is one 

of FMCSA’s four highest priorities for improving commercial motor vehicle 

safety in fiscal years 2005 and 2006. However, FMCSA does not have a goal 

that specifies how much it would like to reduce the backlogs or by what 

date, as required by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act.

FMCSA has several intermediate outcome goals and performance 

measures related to the effects that its enforcement programs have on 

increasing carriers’ and drivers’ compliance with safety regulations. 

However, FMCSA does not measure the effect that one of its key 

enforcement actions—civil penalties against motor carriers—has on 

carriers’ compliance or safety.27 In addition, FMCSA’s intermediate goals do 

not include numerical targets that would help the agency plan its programs 

and make adjustments should it not meet the targets. FMCSA’s 

intermediate outcome goals include: (1) ensuring that commercial motor 

25FMCSA considers a case closed when the final penalty amount has been determined.

26The backlog in headquarters consisted of cases that had remained open for 6 months or 

more. FMCSA’s regional offices also had—and the service centers that replaced them 

continue to have—their own backlogs of cases, but FMCSA did not track the size of these 

backlogs in 1999 and 2000.

27Civil penalties comprised 81 percent of FMCSA’s enforcement actions against motor 

carriers following compliance reviews during fiscal years 2002 through 2004. FMCSA 

considers compliance reviews to be its key enforcement program.
Page 31 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

vehicles have optimum safety performance; (2) ensuring that all 

commercial motor vehicle drivers are fully qualified, safe, alert, and 

healthy; and (3) increasing the safety performance of the worst offending 

motor carriers to meet the norm. FMCSA has many performance measures 

related to these goals, including ones that reflect the average numbers of 

vehicle-out-of-service violations and driver-out-of-service violations per 

roadside inspection and the percentage of compliance reviews with no 

violations of acute or critical regulations.

The performance measures that address motor carrier performance 

capture the effects of FMCSA’s compliance reviews, but they do not 

indicate the effect on compliance of civil penalties against carriers that 

result from compliance reviews. This is because the performance measures 

do not distinguish between those compliance reviews that result in a civil 

penalty and those that do not, and either type of compliance review can 

increase carriers’ compliance.28 Without a measure of the effectiveness of 

its civil penalties, FMCSA does not know whether or how much the civil 

penalties are increasing carriers’ compliance, and it lacks the information 

needed to make sound decisions about any changes to its use of civil 

penalties. Several years ago, FMCSA did attempt to develop measures of 

the effectiveness of its enforcement actions, including civil penalties, but it 

was not satisfied with the results of the effort.

FMCSA’s performance measures of the end outcomes of its enforcement 

programs are crashes, injuries, and fatalities avoided due to compliance 

reviews, roadside inspections, and traffic enforcement—the difference 

between the actual numbers of crashes, injuries, and fatalities, and how 

many would have occurred in the absence of these enforcement programs. 

Because the numbers that would have occurred in their absence cannot be 

observed, FMCSA uses analytical models to estimate the programs’ 

impacts.29 Using its compliance review impact model, FMCSA estimates 

that about 9,200 compliance reviews conducted in 2002 prevented about 

1,400 crashes, about 1,100 injuries, and about 60 fatalities in the 12 months 

28In fiscal year 2004, 46 percent of FMCSA’s compliance reviews resulted in assessment of a 

civil penalty.

29We did not evaluate the quality of these models because we are not using estimates 

produced by the model as a basis for our findings.
Page 32 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

following the compliance reviews.30 Using its combined roadside 

inspection and traffic enforcement impact model, FMCSA estimates that 

about 3 million roadside inspections (about 800,000 of which included 

enforcement of traffic laws) conducted in 2004 prevented about 19,000 

crashes, about 14,000 injuries, and about 700 fatalities. According to an 

FMCSA official, FMCSA also plans to develop a model to estimate the 

impact of new entrant safety audits.

FMCSA’s Enforcement 

Goals Do Not Describe 

Expected Contributions to 

FMCSA’s Fatality Rate Goal

In addition to goals for its enforcement programs, FMCSA has a primary 

safety goal that is agencywide—that is, FMCSA seeks to achieve the goal 

through its various efforts, including enforcement, education and outreach, 

and research and technology. FMCSA’s primary safety goal is to reduce the 

rate of fatalities involving large trucks per 100 million miles of truck travel 

by 41 percent from 2.81 in 1996 to 1.65 in 2008. FMCSA expects its 

enforcement programs, as the agency’s primary means of reducing truck 

crashes, to help meet the fatality rate goal. Furthermore, for three of its 

enforcement programs (compliance reviews, roadside inspections, and 

traffic enforcement), FMCSA has goals for avoiding fatalities, and, as 

mentioned above, it also has measures of how many fatalities these 

programs avoid. However, the goals do not describe the program’s 

expected contributions to the fatality rate goal. We have reported that 

program goals should demonstrate programs’ contributions to meeting 

agencywide goals.31 Currently, the goals state that the programs are 

expected to avoid fatalities, but they do not include targets that specify 

how many fatalities are expected to be avoided each year. However, in 

order to demonstrate expected contributions to reducing the fatality rate, 

the goals would need to have numerical targets that increase from year to 

year; these targets should also be commensurate with the resources the 

agency expects to receive.

30Although FMCSA conducted over 12,000 compliance reviews in 2002, only 9,172 of these 

reviews met the criteria for inclusion in FMCSA’s model.

31GAO, Executive Guide: Effectively Implementing the Government Performance and 

Results Act, GAO/GGD-96-118 (Washington, D.C.: June 1996). We have reported that 

because outcomes, such as reduced fatality rates, are the result of the interplay of several 

factors including agencies’ programs and factors external to agencies’ efforts, it can be 

difficult and expensive to rigorously evaluate the relative contribution of multiple programs 

to the accomplishment of agencywide goals. See GAO, Managing for Results: Analytic 

Challenges in Measuring Performance, GAO/HEHS/GGD-97-138 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 

1997).
Page 33 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Similarly, in order to demonstrate the enforcement programs’ estimated 

contributions to any reductions in the fatality rate, FMCSA would need to 

compare its estimates of fatalities avoided from year to year. For example, 

based on FMCSA’s estimates of fatalities avoided, its enforcement 

programs avoided 19 more fatalities in 2002 compared to 2001 (848 

fatalities avoided in 2002 compared to 829 fatalities avoided in 2001). This 

estimated increase in fatalities avoided represents the estimated 

contribution that FMCSA’s enforcement programs made to the overall 

reduction of 172 truck-crash-related fatalities that occurred from 2001 to 

2002 (from 5,111 fatalities in 2001 to 4,939 fatalities in 2002). Turning to 

fatalities per 100 million truck miles traveled, the rate declined from 2.45 in 

2001 to 2.30 in 2002. Based on the estimated increase in fatalities avoided 

by FMCSA’s enforcement programs in 2002 compared to 2001, these 

programs contributed 0.02 to the total decrease of 0.14 in the fatality rate.32

Because we did not assess the quality of these models, we are not 

suggesting that FMCSA’s enforcement programs had these illustrated 

results. Rather, this is an example of the kind of analysis FMCSA could 

employ in order to demonstrate its enforcement programs’ estimated 

contributions to any reductions in the fatality rate. 

FMCSA Has Made Several 

Refinements to Its 

Enforcement Programs and 

It May Make Additional 

Refinements Depending on 

the Outcomes of Studies

FMCSA has made several refinements to its enforcement programs based 

on agency studies of factors that affect crash risk, and on evaluations of the 

effectiveness of the programs themselves,33 and it is exploring additional, 

potentially substantial, refinements to its enforcement approach. FMCSA 

plans to conduct additional analyses of crash risk factors and on the costs 

and effectiveness of its enforcement programs to help it further refine and 

set priorities for its programs.

FMCSA has made several refinements to its enforcement programs based 

on agency studies of factors that affect crash risk. To date, only one such 

refinement has been based on the results of FMCSA’s most substantial 

effort to understand the causes of, and contributing factors to, large truck 

crashes—its Large Truck Crash Causation Study, which FMCSA began in 

32The total decrease of 0.14 does not equal the difference between 2.45 and 2.30 due to 

rounding.

33We did not evaluate the quality of these studies because (1) we are not using data or 

findings from the studies as a basis for our findings; and (2) we are not evaluating whether 

the study results that FMCSA is using to inform its decision-making are based on reliable 

data, sound methodology, and appropriate analyses.
Page 34 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

2001. This study was required by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act 

with the intent of providing information that would help FMCSA and the 

states identify and set priorities for programs and other measures likely to 

lead to significant reductions in crashes involving commercial motor 

vehicles. Congress also required FMCSA, in designing and conducting the 

study, to consult with experts on crash causation, research methods, and 

other relevant topics. To meet this requirement, FMCSA requested the 

Transportation Research Board to form a committee to review the study’s 

design and provide advice to FMCSA on study methods. The committee 

expressed several concerns about FMCSA’s design, and FMCSA revised the 

design in response to some of these concerns.34 Based on preliminary 

results from the study indicating that truck and car driver factors (such as 

fatigue, inattention, and misjudgment) are much more likely than vehicle 

factors (such as defective brakes and worn tires) to be the critical reason 

for crashes involving a truck and a car, FMCSA has decided to shift the 

focus of some of its inspections from the truck to the driver,35 and has 

called on states to institute “driver inspection strike forces” in high-crash 

corridors. FMCSA plans to conduct more formal analyses of data from the 

study over the next several years, and, depending on the results, it may 

make additional refinements to its enforcement programs. Other examples 

of refinements to its enforcement programs that FMCSA has made based 

on studies of factors that affect crash risks include:

• Safety of new entrants: Based on studies indicating that new motor 

carriers had higher crash rates and lower rates of compliance with 

safety regulations, in 1999 Congress directed FMCSA to develop a 

program to ensure that new entrants would operate safely. As discussed 

previously, in 2003 FMCSA initiated such a program that emphasizes 

educating new entrants about their obligations under the safety 

regulations, rather than taking enforcement actions when safety 

deficiencies are identified. FMCSA intends to strengthen the 

enforcement component of the new entrant program.

34We did not evaluate the quality of the committee’s review or FMCSA’s changes for the same 

reasons that we did not evaluate the quality of any of FMCSA’s studies, as described above.

35FMCSA intends to achieve this shift by conducting more inspections that cover only 

drivers, more inspections that cover drivers and involve a walk-around check of the truck, 

and fewer of the more time-consuming inspections that cover drivers and involve a full 

inspection of the truck.
Page 35 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

• Share the Road Safely: Based on studies indicating that, in fatal crashes 

involving a car and a truck, errors by car drivers are more frequently 

cited in police reports than are errors by truck drivers,36 in 1991, 

Congress directed FMCSA to develop a program to educate drivers 

about how to drive safely in the vicinity of trucks; in 1994, FMCSA 

initiated the Share the Road Safely program for this purpose. Many 

highway safety experts believe that programs such as Share the Road 

Safely are more likely to produce substantial changes in drivers’ 

behaviors if the education efforts are combined with local law 

enforcement programs to increase compliance with traffic laws. FMCSA 

agrees that enforcement should be a part of the program, and in 2005 it 

began to pilot test a combined education and enforcement approach in 

Washington state.

To its credit, FMCSA has also made several refinements to its enforcement 

programs based on agency evaluations of the effectiveness of the programs 

themselves. The Government Performance and Results Act calls for 

agencies to evaluate the results of their programs, and we have suggested 

that agencies use information on the performance of their programs to 

identify opportunities for improvement.37 Examples of refinements to its 

enforcement programs that FMCSA has made based on its evaluations of 

the effectiveness of the programs include:

• Roadside inspections: Based on its analysis indicating that the 

inspection program is no longer leading to annual increases in the 

industry-wide level of compliance with safety regulations, an FMCSA 

official also told us that the agency is no longer seeking to increase the 

number of roadside inspections from year to year.

• Safety of new entrants: Based on (1) its analysis indicating that new 

entrant safety audits—which currently emphasize education—have not 

had a major impact on crash rates and (2) data showing that less than 1 

percent of audited new entrants were failing the audit despite the fact 

that many new entrants were operating without comprehensive 

knowledge of the requirements and without being in compliance with 

the safety regulations, FMCSA intends to increase the level of 

36Safety groups have questioned the findings of these studies, while a major truck industry 

group agrees with the findings. As discussed above, we did not evaluate the quality of the 

studies.

37GAO/GGD-96-118.
Page 36 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

compliance required to pass the audit and to avoid an enforcement 

action. FMCSA plans to publish a proposed regulation to this effect in 

March 2006.

• Compliance reviews: Based on its 2002 evaluation indicating that 

inconsistencies and bottlenecks in its compliance review process were 

reducing its efficiency and effectiveness, FMCSA made several changes 

in 2003 aimed at improving compliance review policies, procedures, 

training, software, and supporting carrier data. Specific examples 

include:

• FMCSA discouraged repeat visits to high-risk motor carriers that had 

received unsatisfactory safety ratings during a review conducted 

within the past 12 months because the agency believed that not 

enough time had elapsed to show whether safety improvements had 

taken effect.

• FMCSA (1) discouraged safety investigators from their earlier 

practice of favoring violations of drug and alcohol regulations over 

violations of hours of service regulations when they choose which 

violations to document for enforcement because crash data and 

FMCSA’s survey of its field staff suggest that hours of service 

compliance is more important for safety, and (2) revised its 

operations manual to encourage FMCSA’s state division offices to 

document the maximum number of parts of the regulations where 

major safety violations are discovered, rather than penalizing motor 

carriers for a few violations in a particular part at the expense of 

other parts.

FMCSA has not evaluated the impact that these and other changes 

have had on the efficiency and effectiveness of the compliance 

review process, but an FMCSA official told us that the agency 

believes such an evaluation would be worthwhile and that it will 

consider conducting one.

FMCSA is either conducting, or plans to conduct, several additional 

evaluations of its enforcement approach, programs, and supporting 

programs. Depending on the results of these evaluations, FMCSA may 

make refinements to each of these. For example:

• Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010: Under this initiative, FMCSA is 

evaluating its current approach to monitoring and assessing the safety 
Page 37 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

of the motor carrier industry, including its enforcement approach, with 

the intent of developing and implementing new approaches. FMCSA 

began the initiative because it believes that the centerpiece of its current 

oversight and enforcement approach—the compliance review 

program—is resource intensive; reaches only about 2 percent of a 

growing motor carrier population each year; does not adequately reflect 

the impact that people involved in motor carriers’ operations, such as 

managers, owners, and drivers, have on safety; and is impeded by 

delayed, incomplete, and inaccurate data on the safety performance of 

carriers. As a starting point for this initiative, FMCSA developed a 

preliminary proposal for a new framework for its oversight and 

enforcement programs. In contrast to FMCSA’s current enforcement 

approach, which considers only the results of compliance reviews in 

determining whether to assess civil penalties against carriers, the 

proposed framework also considers, among other things, indications of 

unsafe driving from traffic violations, crash records, and the results of 

roadside inspections. FMCSA intends to refine and begin 

implementation of the framework over the next several years.

• Roadside inspections: FMCSA is evaluating the effectiveness of 

alternative truck inspection strategies being utilized by states, such as 

building temporary inspection sites, using no fixed sites at all, mobile 

enforcement using wireless communications technologies, and use of 

sophisticated information systems and different kinds of sensing 

technologies. FMCSA expects the results of its evaluation to be 

published in December 2005. As part of a separate evaluation, FMCSA 

plans to review alternatives to its current approach to vehicle roadside 

inspections, such as requiring motor carriers to inspect their vehicles 

more frequently than the current requirement of once a year and having 

third-parties conduct inspections.

• PRISM: FMCSA is evaluating the effectiveness of its PRISM program, 

including assessing whether states that have implemented PRISM have 

achieved greater safety improvements than states that have not, and 

identifying ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the 

program. FMCSA plans to complete the evaluation in August 2006.

• Monitoring drivers’ hours of service: FMCSA is evaluating the costs 

and benefits of requiring electronic on-board recorders for monitoring 

drivers’ hours of service, as required by a July 2004 federal appeals court 

ruling that criticized the agency for not having conducted such an 

assessment.
Page 38 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

• Drug and alcohol testing: In the next several years, FMCSA plans to 

study whether the effectiveness of the agency’s efforts to ensure 

compliance with its regulations prohibiting certain uses of drugs and 

alcohol by drivers is being adversely affected by (1) how motor carriers 

are selecting drivers for random testing, (2) whether carriers are 

actually testing each driver selected, and (3) tests in which bogus 

samples are submitted. FMCSA may make policy, regulatory, and 

enforcement changes depending on the findings of the study.

• Share the Road Safely: In March 2006, FMCSA plans to complete an 

evaluation of the effectiveness of the ongoing Share the Road Safely 

pilot program in Washington state that FMCSA is jointly funding with 

the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The pilot combines 

education and enforcement to improve the safety of car drivers’ driving 

behavior in the vicinity of trucks. If the results of the evaluation are 

favorable, FMCSA intends to extend the program to other states.

• Border safety programs: FMCSA plans to conduct an evaluation of its 

border safety audit and compliance review programs in 2007. Border 

safety audits and compliance reviews can result in revocation of a motor 

carrier’s authority to operate in the U.S., and FMCSA plans for its 

evaluation to cover this enforcement aspect of the program.

In addition to its ongoing and planned program evaluations, FMCSA plans 

to develop a tool to help the agency set priorities for its enforcement 

programs by comparing their cost-effectiveness. The tool would produce 

estimates of cost-effectiveness by combining information from the models 

that FMCSA currently uses to estimate the impact of compliance reviews, 

roadside inspections, and traffic enforcement in terms of reductions in 

crashes, injuries, and fatalities with information on the costs of these 

programs. We have reported that considering information on both the costs 

and effectiveness of programs gives agencies a basis for focusing their 

efforts and improving their performance,38 and the Office of Management 

and Budget has guidelines for considering both the costs and benefits when 

making decisions to initiate, renew, or expand programs which would 

result in a series of measurable benefits or costs extending for 

38GAO/GGD-96-118.
Page 39 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

three or more years into the future.39 FMCSA officials told us that the tool 

could also cover new entrant safety audits and certain education and 

outreach programs. As part of a separate effort, FMCSA has developed 

preliminary estimates of the average cost of a compliance review and the 

average cost of a roadside inspection. However, the estimates are not based 

on consistent assumptions, and an FMCSA official told us that the agency 

intends to reassess the costs for purposes of its prioritization tool.40

As recommended by the Office of Management and Budget, FMCSA also 

plans to start evaluating the costs incurred and the benefits realized by its 

existing regulations, beginning with evaluations of two regulations in 2006. 

Finally, in 2006 FMCSA plans to identify long-term trends in the motor 

carrier industry and how these trends could affect the agency’s ability to 

meet its strategic goals and objectives over the next 20 years. FMCSA 

intends to use the results of this effort to support its policy development 

and strategic planning. We are encouraged by FMCSA’s ongoing and 

planned efforts to obtain additional information on crash risk factors and 

on the costs and effectiveness of its enforcement programs because these 

efforts address long-standing core deficiencies that we identified in 1999 

and 2000.41 We believe that the efforts will, if effectively implemented, 

provide FMCSA with a sound basis to refine and set priorities for its 

enforcement programs.

MCSAP Is Designed to 

Improve Safety but 

Program Oversight Is 

Inadequate

MCSAP employs a performance-based approach to truck safety by 

encouraging states to analyze data to identify safety problems and target 

their grant activities to achieve reductions in truck crashes, injuries, and 

fatalities. However, FMCSA has not adequately overseen the development 

of states’ safety plans. For example, FMCSA’s grant planning meetings, in 

which it communicates priorities and how to develop plans with 

quantifiable goals, were conducted for less than a third of the states in 

39Office of Management and Budget, Guidelines and Discount Rates for Benefit-Cost 

Analysis of Federal Programs, Office of Management and Budget Circular A-94 

(Washington, D.C.: Oct. 29, 1992).

40The cost estimate for roadside inspections includes fringe benefits and overhead 

associated with staff, whereas the cost estimate for compliance reviews does not include 

these costs.

41GAO, Truck Safety: Motor Carriers Office Hampered by Limited Information on Causes 

of Crashes and Other Data Problems, GAO/RCED-99-182 (Washington, D.C.: June 29, 1999) 

and GAO/RCED-00-189.
Page 40 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

fiscal year 2004, and FMCSA division offices that work with states did not 

sufficiently monitor and ensure states’ progress towards safety goals. As a 

result, we were unable to determine whether states substantially met many 

of their safety goals. Furthermore, FMCSA has not completed its various 

oversight reviews of MCSAP in the past 3 years, as required by agency 

policy, and which, if carried out, could have helped to identify problems 

both with how states administer and the agency oversees the grant 

program. The agency, though, has recently taken steps to improve its 

grantee review program and strengthen its oversight of MCSAP.

MCSAP Employs a 

Performance-Based 

Approach to Improve Safety

Since 1997, FMCSA has employed a performance-based approach for 

funding state commercial vehicle safety activities through MCSAP. The 

performance-based approach entails states analyzing data to identify 

commercial vehicle safety problems in their respective jurisdictions and 

targeting their grant activities to achieve FMCSA’s primary goal of reducing 

truck crashes, injuries, and fatalities. As part of this approach, states must 

also demonstrate how their proposed goals and activities further other 

FMCSA goals, such as improving data quality and timeliness. In their safety 

plans, states are required to measure and evaluate their performance, 

which fosters accountability.42

Since 2000, FMCSA has convened several meetings to assist states in 

developing their plans. First, every spring, each service center is expected 

to hold a planning meeting attended by the state representatives and 

division office staff that administer and oversee the grant program. Service 

center and headquarters staff are to communicate the priorities for and 

changes made to the grant program for the coming year. The states are to 

reflect these priorities and changes in their safety plans. In addition, the 

Volpe National Transportation Systems Center is to provide states with 

training at planning meetings on analyzing data and developing goals, 

activities, and performance measures to address safety problems. Some 

states, such as New York and North Carolina, have also partnered with 

universities to conduct additional research and analysis on commercial 

42For more information on how management’s use of performance information can improve 

accountability, see GAO, Managing For Results: Enhancing Agency Use of Performance 

Information for Management Decision Making, GAO-05-927 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 9, 

2005).
Page 41 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

vehicle safety.43 Finally, FMCSA’s National Training Center conducts a 

MCSAP grants management training course that addresses, among other 

topics, how to develop safety plans, including goals, activities, and 

performance measures.

Second, FMSCA conducts two examinations of the states’ draft safety plans 

to ensure completeness, and that goals and activities are measurable and 

support FMCSA’s mission. Initially, division office staff are to use a 

standardized checklist to ensure that states’ safety plans incorporate the 

required elements. These elements include an identification of safety 

problems based on data analysis; goals, performance measures and 

activities that address state and agency priorities; evaluations of state 

progress towards the previous year’s goals and activities; and certification 

of compatibility of state’s motor carrier safety regulations with federal 

regulations. If any of the required elements are missing or unclear, the 

division office staff are expected to return the safety plan to the state for 

revision. FMCSA officials explained that after the division office staff 

approves the safety plan, they are to forward it for review by a “technical 

review panel” comprised of several service center and division office staff 

in that region before it is finalized and forwarded to headquarters. 

FMCSA staff at division offices, service centers, and headquarters consider 

these planning meetings and safety plan examinations to be valuable 

components of the grant program. We did not analyze the degree to which 

these meetings and safety plan examinations improved the states’ safety 

plans.

To further encourage improvements in commercial vehicle safety, FMCSA 

awards MCSAP incentive funds over and above the basic program funds to 

states that meet agency-specified safety criteria,44 such as reducing the 

number of commercial-vehicle-involved fatal accidents or the commercial 

vehicle fatal accident rate. States can also receive incentive funds if they 

meet other agency-specified safety performance criteria, such as the timely 

43New York state partners with the State University of New York, Albany, and North Carolina 

has a partnership with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

44In 1995, we reported that financial incentives in a grant program can spur performance by 

being tied to states’ progress towards specified national goals. See GAO, Block Grants: 

Issues in Designing Accountability Provisions, GAO/AIMD-95-226 (Washington, D.C.: 

Sept. 1, 1995).
Page 42 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

uploading of accident or inspection data, or checking the status of 

commercial driver licenses during all roadside inspections.45

FMCSA’s Inadequate 

Planning and Oversight of 

Its State Grant Program 

Resulted in Uncertainty 

About Whether States Met 

Many of Their Safety Goals

Although MCSAP employs a performance-based approach to improving 

safety, it remains unclear whether the states we reviewed substantially met 

a majority of their safety goals. Using safety plans, quarterly reports, 

evaluations of previous years’ efforts, and other monitoring information on 

states’ activities, we assessed the extent to which seven state grantees 

substantially met their safety goals in fiscal year 2004. Of the 61 goals in 

states’ safety plans, we could not determine whether 61 percent of these 

goals were substantially met.46 Of the remaining goals, we determined that 

23 percent were substantially met, while 16 percent were not.47

We could not determine whether a majority of states’ safety goals were 

substantially met because FMCSA did not thoroughly conduct three 

important oversight activities intended to help FMCSA make its own 

determination of states’ progress towards their safety goals. First, FMCSA 

did not adequately carry out planning activities for 2004 MCSAP grants 

designed to ensure that states’ safety plans included all of the key 

elements—quantifiable national and state goals, performance measures, 

and evaluations—needed to gauge whether state goals had been met. In 

this regard, planning meetings—where states receive assistance in 

developing goals, activities, and performance measures to address safety 

problems—were convened by only one of the four service centers. The 

meetings were not convened by three service centers because one did not 

have a state programs staff person to convene the meeting, another 

45In fiscal year 2004—the year for which we reviewed MCSAP oversight—Congress 

appropriated approximately $11 million for incentive funds.

46For the purposes of this report, we considered that goals were substantially met if the state 

achieved 95 percent of its proposed goal.

47In the instances where safety goals were not substantially met, division offices reported 

that states generally provided FMCSA with reasonable explanations as to why and that 

these explanations were usually beyond the control of the state. For example, one state set a 

target for its safety investigators to complete 642 compliance reviews in 2004. This target 

was set prior to the implementation of a legislatively-required new entrant safety audit 

program for which states had to shift resources from conducting compliance reviews 

towards conducting new entrant audits. Therefore, the state was able to complete only 348 

reviews that year. Other explanations included a change in funding priorities for the state at 

the gubernatorial level and a delay in MCSAP funding that limited the amount of available 

state staff and time.
Page 43 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

interpreted headquarters guidance to suggest that division offices work on 

MCSAP planning directly with states without service center assistance, and 

the third was constrained by states’ budget restrictions at the time. 

Headquarters officials told us that they had expected planning meetings to 

occur that year. We also found that only one service center held technical 

review panels to ensure that safety plans included all of the key elements 

described above. One service center did not have a state programs staff 

person to convene a panel, while two service centers did not hold technical 

review panels because they believed their curbed oversight role of the 

service centers from fiscal years 1999 through 2003 implied that they 

should not conduct technical review panels. At the time, agency leadership 

restructured the agency to create a more direct relationship between 

headquarters and the division offices. Therefore, officials at these two 

service centers told us they felt that they did not have the authority to 

conduct many of their previous oversight activities. However, agency 

officials told us that they did not suspend technical review panels during 

that time period. Officials at the fourth service center—which originated 

the concept of the technical review panel—also acknowledged the curbed 

oversight role of service centers, but that they had conducted a panel for 

fiscal year 2004 because of their recognition that strong management 

should be maintained in their state grant programs. According to agency 

officials, current agency leadership, however, has encouraged service 

centers to assume a greater oversight role.

Second, FMCSA division offices did not follow program guidance that 

requires ensuring that state safety plans incorporate key elements to 

adequately gauge states’ performance. We found that goals or performance 

measures were not quantifiable, or were missing from various portions of 

the safety plans for the seven states we reviewed. When asked about this, 

staff from two of the division offices told us that quantifiable goals or 

performance measures in their safety plans are not always needed. 

However, we believe these key elements are critical because, without them, 

FMCSA would not be able to objectively assess whether states’ goals had 

been substantially met. In contrast, staff from the other division offices 

with whom we spoke responded that they did not realize that multi-year 

goals should incorporate annual performance measures, or that goals and 

performance measures in the safety plans were not quantifiable or were 

missing. These staff agreed that incorporating such information into the 

safety plans would be appropriate and responded that they would consider 

doing so in the future.
Page 44 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Finally, because FMCSA division offices did not adequately monitor states’ 

progress towards safety plan goals, they did not obtain the information that 

would have enabled both them and us to determine whether state safety 

goals were substantially met. Offices monitor states’ progress by reviewing 

quarterly reports, safety plan evaluations, and data reports, and through 

phone calls, E-mails and in-person meetings. For example, one of the seven 

states we examined—the sixth largest overall grantee in fiscal year 2004—

did not submit required quarterly reports to its respective division office for 

several years. This was due to the responsible state staff person’s belief 

that it was unnecessary to complete them. The division office followed-up 

with the state about this issue, but no further corrective action, such as 

withholding the state’s future grant funding, was taken by the agency. The 

division office also reported that because the lead agency was in the 

process of changing, a new staff person would be assuming the 

responsibility and that they expect the quarterly reports to once again be 

submitted. In addition to the omission of quarterly reports, we found that 

three of the largest grantees did not include evaluations of both national 

and state goals in their safety plans, despite this being a program 

requirement. When we asked the respective division offices about this, they 

responded that this omission was not of concern because their office had a 

general sense of the states’ progress through their monitoring. However, 

the information that these offices provided to support their monitoring 

effort, for the most part, did not allow us to assess whether the state had 

met its goals. Agency officials believe that some of the required 

information—such as quarterly progress reports and yearly evaluations—

may no longer be necessary given their regular communication with states 

and access to information regarding state activities. However, given that 

MCSAP relies on a performance-based approach, the agency would not be 

able to adequately measure how grant funds are contributing to improving 

safety without this information. All of the division offices provided us with 

records of their monitoring, including data reports and E-mails. However, 

for the most part, their records did not provide enough information about 

states’ progress for us to determine whether certain safety goals had been 

substantially met. Additionally, only one division office we reviewed 

formally tracks its state’s activities by the goals specified in the safety plan, 

and this office has only recently begun to do so.

Some division office staff conveyed their concerns regarding states’ safety 

plans. The staff of two division offices recognized that their states’ 2004 

safety plans were not complete in terms of the key elements we discussed 

and that future improvements were needed. As a result, both division 

offices have explained that they are working more closely with the states to 
Page 45 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

highlight these key elements in order to strengthen subsequent safety 

plans. Furthermore, the staff of all seven division offices generally 

understood the inability to gauge state performance based on the issues we 

identified and responded that they would consider our comments in the 

development of their states’ 2006 safety plans.

FMCSA Has Not Completed 

Various Oversight Reviews 

of Its Grant Program but 

Has Taken Steps to Improve 

Its State Review Program

FMCSA guidance states that three MCSAP-related reviews are to be 

conducted every 3 years: (1) division offices are to review their respective 

state grantees, (2) service centers are to review the division offices in their 

region, and (3) headquarters is to review the four service centers. Agency 

officials told us that the purpose of these reviews is to identify any 

weaknesses in the administration, monitoring, or oversight of the grant 

program by a state, division office, or service center. The reviews also 

identify best practices that could be applied to other states, division offices, 

or service centers.48

We found that FMCSA division offices reviewed only 19 of 56 grantees (34 

percent) in the past 3 years. Of the completed reviews, issues cited include 

the incompatibility of various state motor carrier safety regulations with 

federal regulations, the need to better integrate performance-based 

approaches to state safety plans, missing quarterly reports and narratives 

that address a prior year’s goals, and less-than-comprehensive annual 

evaluations of safety plan goals. Among the seven largest grantees, we 

followed up with the three division offices that had not completed reviews 

in the last 3 years to learn why they were not conducted. Two of these three 

division offices did not conduct reviews due to reorganization of the lead 

agency within their respective states. However, given that reviews tend to 

last between a week and several weeks and that there is a 3-year period to 

conduct state reviews, division offices would have had sufficient time to 

complete a review either before or after the reorganization. The third 

division office cited conducting a series of smaller “process” reviews as 

48The reviews of states focus only on MCSAP and are more comprehensive in scope than the 

safety plan development and program monitoring activities carried out by the agency.
Page 46 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

fulfilling the state review.49 When we asked headquarters about several 

division offices not conducting reviews of states, agency officials 

responded that they were disappointed many of the reviews had not been 

completed. However, they said they are taking steps—such as creating an 

implementation schedule of reviews to be conducted—to ensure that 

future state grantee reviews are completed in a timely fashion.

The agency has also not reviewed division offices and service centers, as 

required by agency policy. In the past 3 years, the four service centers 

reviewed only 15 of 52 division offices (29 percent). We found that a 

contributing factor to the lack of reviews was the curbed oversight role of 

the service centers (as noted earlier) that was attributable to agency 

restructuring. The restructuring was designed to create a more direct 

relationship between headquarters and the division offices. We also learned 

that, among the four service centers, one did not conduct any division 

office reviews during the past 3 years because it believed that it should not 

conduct the reviews given the curbed oversight role of the service centers 

during part of that time period. Furthermore, headquarters has also not 

reviewed any of the service centers in over 3 years. Staff in headquarters 

cited a lack of staff and time as their primary reason for not completing 

these reviews. Headquarters staff devoted to MCSAP have steadily 

decreased over the past 11 years, from 11 full-time employees in 1995 to 4 

full-time employees in 2005.

In a majority of the 15 division office reviews conducted, service centers 

identified gaps in the monitoring and oversight responsibilities of division 

offices. Some of the recommendations from these reviews address 

commonly identified division office performance issues, including (1) not 

tracking, recording, or retaining information on their monitoring activities; 

(2) not providing consistent feedback to states about findings from 

monitoring activities; (3) not following-through to ensure improvements 

were made or tracking or recording any corrective actions that needed to 

be, or have been taken, by the state; and (4) not conducting grantee reviews 

49A process review focuses on one of the six review elements that are covered by the larger 

state review. While a minimum number of process reviews are not required to be fulfilled 

within a certain time period, program reviews are required to cover at least a 12-month 

period and each of the six review elements. In response to several states not conducting a 

program review because they had completed process reviews, agency officials agreed that 

the MCSAP guidance was ambiguous regarding this matter and that they would seek to 

clarify it as they update this guidance. They expect to complete updating the MCSAP 

guidance by the end of 2005.
Page 47 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

as required by agency policy. Furthermore, two of the four service centers 

did not keep track of the division offices that have conducted state grantee 

reviews, and therefore they did not have the information to know which 

division office reviews had not been completed and what types of 

monitoring problems had been identified. Although we did not evaluate the 

extent to which division office reviews are necessary for the agency to 

conduct adequate oversight, we believe that the frequency with which 

monitoring problems were identified suggests the usefulness of these 

reviews. Lastly, we learned that headquarters does not keep track of 

whether division offices conduct state reviews.

In addition to identifying gaps in monitoring and oversight, the agency also 

identifies what it considers to be best practices during its reviews of 

division offices. We have suggested that the sharing of best practices can be 

helpful in improving grantee performance.50 However, the agency has not 

fully shared those best practices among other division offices. Several best 

practices of division offices were identified during these reviews. Among 

them were (1) the development and use of an automated monitoring of 

state grant activities, (2) the convening of regular formal meetings with the 

state, (3) the development of a detailed quarterly report format that 

includes progress made towards safety plan goals, and (4) the hiring of an 

administrative grants manager. However, only two of the four service 

centers have actively circulated best practices from state reviews to 

division offices. The other two service centers told us that they intend to 

circulate these best practices in the future.

In recognizing that the way in which states are reviewed has not been 

recently revised to reflect changes in MCSAP, and that it would like the 

reviews to have a greater focus on the financial aspects of the program, 

FMCSA has taken steps to improve its state grantee review program. In 

December 2004, the agency completed a draft plan for the new review 

program. The proposed program would be carried out by a joint team of 

division office, service center, headquarters, and contractor staff that 

would assist the division offices, and is comprised of three parts: a 

regulatory review, a financial review, and a performance review. The 

performance review would compare states’ activities with the goals 

specified in their safety plans, and would emphasize the monitoring of 

performance. After a review is completed, a draft report of findings, 

50See GAO, Student Mentoring Programs: Education’s Monitoring and Information 

Sharing Could be Improved, GAO-04-581 (Washington, D.C.: June 25, 2004).
Page 48 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

recommendations, and other information would undergo review by the 

division office and the state. FMCSA plans for this program to follow a 4-

year cycle for conducting the reviews. Agency officials told us that they 

have piloted this review program in four states, and officials expect the 

program will be fully implemented by the first quarter of fiscal year 2006. 

To ensure that this improved review program follows a 4-year cycle, 

FMCSA officials told us that they plan to schedule the reviews several years 

in advance and track which ones have been completed. Because this 

proposed review program is in the planning stage, we did not assess 

whether it is likely to address the problems we found. 

Further, FMCSA has several other efforts underway to strengthen the 

agency’s oversight of MCSAP. First, agency officials noted that a newly 

created senior position to manage and oversee the service centers was 

recently filled, and that FMCSA plans to request three additional MCSAP 

staff in headquarters as part of its budget request for fiscal year 2007. 

Second, agency officials told us that they plan to incorporate an 

expectation of completing oversight reviews in the individual performance 

plans of all division office, service center, and headquarters staff that are 

responsible for MCSAP. Third, recent legislation requires that the agency 

report annually to Congress on the effectiveness of the grant program.51

Finally, FMCSA has two studies underway that relate to agency oversight of 

MCSAP: one to determine the effectiveness of division offices’ activities, 

and the other to assure the quality of the agency’s grant operations.

Conclusions In making decisions about its enforcement approach, FMCSA follows many 

of the effective management practices we identified related to performance 

management. We believe that it is noteworthy that FMCSA has begun to 

refine its enforcement approach based on information about the causes of 

crashes, that it plans to develop a tool to help it set priorities for its 

enforcement programs based on estimates of their cost-effectiveness, and 

that it has conducted—and continues to conduct—program evaluations of 

its enforcement programs, including evaluations that are assessing 

alternative approaches to enforcement. These efforts, if implemented 

effectively, should provide FMCSA with a reasonable basis for setting 

priorities for—and further refining—its enforcement programs in ways that 

reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities in a cost-effective manner. However, 

51Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users.
Page 49 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

because the agency’s goals and measures for its enforcement programs do 

not describe expected and estimated contributions to FMCSA’s overall goal 

of reducing the large-truck fatality rate, FMCSA and the public do not have 

a sense of how much the programs contribute to any reductions in the 

fatality rate that may occur over time. The absence of this kind of 

information makes it more difficult for FMCSA to make adjustments to its 

enforcement programs that could help achieve its fatality rate goal. In 

addition, because FMCSA does not know how much its civil penalties 

increase carriers’ compliance with safety regulations, it lacks the 

information it needs to make sound decisions about any changes to its use 

of civil penalties; it also may be missing opportunities to increase carrier 

compliance, and ultimately safety, that could result from such changes. 

Furthermore, without targets specifying by how much it expects to reduce 

its backlog of enforcement cases and by when, Congress and other 

interested parties find it more difficult to hold the agency accountable for 

achieving this goal—one of the agency’s four highest priorities for 

improving commercial motor vehicle safety in fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

FMCSA’s overall framework establishing performance and accountability 

for MCSAP is sound. It establishes expectations for safety improvements 

by grantees to help further the department’s goal of saving lives and 

contains several mechanisms to help ensure that these expectations will be 

met. This is important, as MCSAP represents almost half of FMCSA’s 

budget and the agency counts on it to materially contribute to saving lives. 

However, we found that the execution of these expectations has, too often, 

not been met, and aspects of how the agency actually works with states to 

oversee performance need strengthening. These conditions ranged from 

planning opportunities forgone, to differing perspectives about 

performance requirements on the part of division office and service center 

staff, to unfulfilled reviews of performance. While there are various reasons 

underlying the conditions that we found, all contributed to the end result of 

FMCSA not being in a position to determine whether states focused their 

attention on, and carried out, activities that could lead to lives saved. 

Further, the steps taken by the agency to strengthen safety plans and 

improve reviews of states performance are promising, but FMCSA should 

also assess its own oversight of the program. 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

We are making five recommendations aimed at improving FMCSA’s 

enforcement programs and MCSAP oversight:
Page 50 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

• To help ensure and demonstrate that FMCSA’s enforcement programs 

contribute to the agency’s goal to reduce the large truck fatality rate, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FMCSA 

administrator to set goals for its enforcement programs that are 

designed to clearly demonstrate these contributions.

• To improve FMCSA’s ability to establish the most effective structure of 

civil penalties, we recommend that the Secretary of Transportation 

direct the FMCSA administrator to develop and implement one or more 

measures of the effectiveness of its civil penalties against motor 

carriers.

• To improve the consistency and effectiveness of FMCSA’s truck safety 

enforcement, we recommend that the Secretary of Transportation direct 

the FMCSA administrator to develop and include in its strategy and 

annual plans a specific numeric or measurable goal to eliminate the 

agency’s backlog of enforcement cases, as required by the Motor Carrier 

Safety Improvement Act of 1999.

• To improve accountability for use of MCSAP grant funds, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Transportation direct the FMCSA 

administrator to ensure that existing mechanisms, such as planning 

sessions, reviews of draft state plans, and periodic monitoring of states’ 

progress, to the extent possible, are carried out and result in clarity of 

goals and performance measures and assessments of safety 

improvements made.

• To improve FMCSA’s oversight of MCSAP grantees, we recommend that 

the Secretary of Transportation direct the FMCSA administrator to (1) 

assess, upon implementation, whether the improved performance 

review of state activities are meeting the agency’s intended goals; (2) 

incorporate MCSAP oversight as a segment of the effectiveness study of 

division offices; and (3) assess the oversight activities of service centers.

Agency Comments and 

Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to the Department of Transportation for 

review and comment and received comments from FMCSA officials. 

FMCSA generally agreed with the report’s findings and agreed to consider 

our recommendations. FMCSA offered several corrections, which we 

incorporated in this report.
Page 51 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

We are sending copies of this report to congressional committees and 

subcommittees with responsibilities for commercial motor vehicle safety 

issues; the Secretary of Transportation; the Administrator, FMCSA; and the 

Director, Office of Management and Budget. We will also make copies 

available to others upon request. This report will be available at no charge 

on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-

2834 or siggerudk@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional 

Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. 

Staff who made key contributions to this report are listed in appendix II.

Katherine Siggerud

Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues
Page 52 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Appendix I

Scope and Methodology AAppenednxidexiIs

In determining how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration 

(FMCSA) used its enforcement authority to address noncompliance with 

the federal motor carrier safety regulations, we reviewed legislation, 

congressional reports leading to the creation of FMCSA, FMCSA 

regulations, manuals, guidance, and assessments of the agency’s 

enforcement efforts by the Department of Transportation Office of 

Inspector General, and our own assessments. In addition, we obtained 

information from FMCSA about enforcement policies, the implementation 

of these policies and procedures, and analyzed enforcement data; we 

focused on fiscal years 1995 through 2004 in our efforts. We chose 1995 

because it represented a period in which FMCSA partnered with industry 

and provided a 10-year period from which to observe changes in FMCSA’s 

policies and actions. We discussed these requirements and the agency’s 

implementation of them with FMCSA, industry and safety advocacy groups, 

and transportation researchers.

We also analyzed FMCSA data on compliance reviews, roadside 

inspections, new entrant safety audits, homeland security-related visits of 

hazardous materials carriers, out-of-service orders and orders to cease 

operations, and civil penalties occurring between fiscal years 1995 and 

2004. We used 2004 as the most recent year in our analysis because it is the 

most recent year for which complete data are available. 

In calculating the percentage of the motor carrier industry that receives 

compliance reviews, we used FMCSA’s estimates of the annual size of the 

interstate motor carrier industry. This number is an estimate due to the fact 

that carriers are not required to report the closing of their operations to the 

department. This estimate has improved with the development of the new 

entrant audit program because FMCSA is able to identify non-interstate 

carriers and remove them from the total count.

In determining total civil penalties assessed, we used the average civil 

penalty per violation, rather than the average civil penalty per enforcement 

case. We did this to observe how FMCSA treated different types of 

violations, such as recordkeeping and non-recordkeeping.1

 We made 

several adjustments to FMCSA’s data. First, we removed all motor coach 

cases from the dataset, because this report only focuses on large truck 

safety. During the past decade, passenger carriers have accounted for 

1

The average civil penalty per enforcement case is about $3,700 higher than the average civil 

penalty per violation, because each enforcement case may include several violations.
Appendix I

Scope and Methodology

Page 53 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

slightly more than 1 percent of enforcement actions. Second, we excluded 

all cases that the agency closed without enforcement or that remained 

open as of July 2005 (the end of our fieldwork). Between 1995 and 2004, an 

average of 145 cases was closed annually without enforcement, and an 

average of 19 cases was left open. FMCSA chooses to close a case without 

enforcement when the agency decides to cease seeking to collect a civil 

penalty. This can happen for several reasons, but frequently it is due to a 

carrier declaring bankruptcy. Excluding these cases ensured that the 

agency had completed the enforcement process before we analyzed the 

data. Since in many cases that are closed without enforcement the carrier 

is not formally charged with a civil penalty, the data tend to be skewed by 

including these cases. Third, we adjusted all civil penalties for inflation 

using 2004 dollars.

In determining the reliability of FMCSA’s data, we performed electronic 

testing for obvious errors in accuracy and completeness, and we 

interviewed officials from FMCSA’s data analysis division who are 

knowledgeable about the data and how they were entered. FMCSA 

determined that the 1995 data on roadside inspections were not reliable. 

Due to this determination, we did not use these data. For the remainder of 

the data, we determined that the data were sufficiently reliable for the 

types of analysis we present in this report.

In assessing the extent to which FMCSA follows key effective management 

practices in making decisions about its enforcement approach, we 

reviewed our reports on performance management, guidance from the 

Office of Management and Budget, and the Government Performance and 

Results Act to identify key effective management practices for agency 

decision making. The key practices that we identified were related to 

strategy, goals, performance measures, and decision making that considers 

the factors that contribute to large-truck crashes as well as the costs and 

effectiveness of agency programs. We obtained information on FMCSA’s 

enforcement strategy, goals, and performance measures through 

discussions with FMCSA officials, and from FMCSA documents, including 

its budget request for fiscal year 2006 (which also serves as FMCSA’s 

strategic plan, performance plan for fiscal year 2006, and performance 

report for fiscal year 2004). We also reviewed a report entitled Measuring 

the FMCSA’s Safety Objectives from Year 2000 to 20022

 and reports on 

2

FMCSA, Measuring the FMCSA’s Safety Objectives from Year 2000 to 2002, FMCSA-RI-03-

018 (Washington, D.C.: July 2003).
Appendix I

Scope and Methodology

Page 54 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

FMCSA’s estimates of the impact of its enforcement programs. We obtained 

information on FMCSA’s completed and ongoing crash causation studies 

and program evaluations, as well as how the results of some of these 

studies and evaluations have influenced FMCSA’s decisions about 

refinements to its enforcement programs, through discussions with FMCSA 

officials or from FMCSA documents, including program evaluation plans 

and reports, and statements of work for planned evaluations. We also 

attended FMCSA’s October 2004 public session in Falls Church, Virginia, 

designed to obtain input on its Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 

initiative, which is intended to develop a new framework for overseeing 

truck safety.

In assessing the extent to which FMCSA ensures that its Motor Carrier 

Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) grants contribute to the agency’s 

mission, we reviewed regulations and FMCSA guidance relating to the 

design of the grant program and discussed with FMCSA officials how 

accountability is built into it. We assessed FMCSA’s planning and oversight 

of seven MCSAP state grantees in fiscal year 2004 (the latest full year for 

which information was available). These states—California, Georgia, 

Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas—comprised 27 percent 

of all MCSAP grants awarded for that year. Because we chose these states 

judgmentally (representing the largest grantees), we cannot project our 

findings nationwide.3

 Reviewing a larger number of grantees would not 

have been practical due to resource constraints. To increase the reliability 

of our assessment, two analysts independently assessed whether states 

substantially met their goals. They then discussed their results and 

resolved any differences. We then discussed our assessment with FMCSA 

officials responsible for grant activities in those states. We also reviewed all 

four regional service centers to determine how they conduct their oversight 

activities. Finally, we attended a planning meeting for the fiscal year 2006 

safety plans to gain a better understanding of how agency priorities are 

conveyed and how the agency provides assistance to the states in 

developing safety plans.

3

Results from nonprobability samples cannot be used to make inferences about a 

population, because in a nonprobability sample some elements of the population being 

studied have no chance or an unknown chance of being selected as part of the sample.
Page 55 GAO-06-156 Truck Safety Enforcement

Appendix II

GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgements ApendxiI

GAO Contact Katherine Siggerud (202) 512-2834 or siggerudk@gao.gov

Acknowledgements In addition to the contact named above, James Ratzenberger, Assistant 

Director; Mallory Barg Bulman; Craig Fischer; David Goldstein; Tina Won 

Sherman; and Gregory Wilmoth made key contributions to this report. 

(542049)
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