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36–688 PDF 2007

MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY: THE FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION’S OVERSIGHT OF

HIGH-RISK CARRIERS

(110–57)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 11, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

VACANCY 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi

TESTIMONY 

Fleming, Susan A., Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, U.S. Government 

Accountability Office, Washington, D.C. ............................................................ 2

Hersman, Hon. Deborah A.P., Member, National Transportation Safety 

Board, Washington, D.C. ..................................................................................... 2

Hill, Hon. John H., Administrator Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Washington, D.C. ......................................................................................... 2

Scovel, III, Hon. Calvin L., Inspector General, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C. ..................................................................................... 2

Urquhart, Captain Ken, Commercial Vehicle Enforcement, Minnesota State 

Patrol, Mendota Heights, Minnesota .................................................................. 2

Vaughn, Chief Steve, Enforcement Services Division, California Highway Patrol, Sacramento, California ................................................................................ 2

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 31

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 32

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Fleming, Susan A. ................................................................................................... 36

Hersman, Deborah A. P. ......................................................................................... 57

Hill, John H. ............................................................................................................. 73

Scovel, III, Calvin L. ................................................................................................ 96

Urquhart, Captain Ken ........................................................................................... 109

Vaughn, Chief Steve ................................................................................................ 124

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Hill, Hon. John H., Administrator Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.:

Responses to questions from Rep. Buchanan .................................................... 84

Responses to questions from Rep. Carney ......................................................... 85

Responses to questions from Rep. DeFazio ........................................................ 87

Responses to questions from Rep. Napolitano ................................................... 93

Vaughn, Chief Steve, Enforcement Services Division, California Highway Patrol, Sacramento, California, responses to questions from Rep. DeFazio ........ 136

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

The American Trucking Associations, written statement .................................... 138

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(1)

HEARING ON MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY: THE 

FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION’S OVERSIGHT OF HIGH-RISK 

CARRIERS 

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter A. 

DeFazio [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. The Committee will come to order. 

Thank you all for being here. 

I will keep my opening remarks brief in the interest of hoping 

to hear from all of you at least initially before the votes, which inevitably interrupt all of these proceedings. 

When Congress created the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 1999, we had some pretty specific objectives in mind in 

terms of cutting the rate of accident fatality, and we have fallen 

short of those goals. I am holding this hearing in the hope of determining what we might do to move us along more expeditiously toward meeting those goals. 

There are a number of concerns that I will express later in the 

hearing, particularly in questioning, but witnesses may want to anticipate and address those a bit. One thing that concerns me a lot 

is when we actually physically do roadside inspections, which is a 

very small minority of the operations on an annual basis, we find 

pretty consistently that we are taking about a quarter of the trucks 

out of service. That causes me a lot of concern: how might we better address that? 

Then I have other concerns about FMCSA’s rating system and 

when and how they determine someone to be unsatisfactory and 

what remedies are taken after that point, but we will get into that 

more later. 

With that, I would turn to the Ranking Member, Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

calling this very important hearing on the Federal Motor Carrier 

Safety Administration’s oversight of high-risk carriers. 

With 5,212 fatalities and 114,000 injuries related to trucks in 

2005, truck safety is an area which should remain a top priority 

for our Subcommittee and for this Congress. Overall, moving goods 

by trucks on our Nation’s highways is very safe. In 2005, trucks 

2

traveled more 220 billion miles and transported more than 10 billion tons of goods to people all over the Country. In fact, 84 percent 

of all the goods we use and consume get to us by truck. A strong 

trucking industry is essential to our economy and our daily life. 

Despite all the benefits we receive from trucks and from the 

trucking industry, work still needs to be done to improve truck 

safety. In 2005, there were 2.34 fatal crashes per 100 million miles 

traveled by trucks. This rate has greatly improved over the years. 

The number of fatalities is still too high. It is important that we 

try to develop strategies to further reduce this rate. 

Today’s hearing on the Government’s targeting of high-risk carriers is very important. By targeting these high-risk companies, we 

have a chance to make the highways safer for everyone, not just 

drivers of passenger vehicles for truck drivers as well. 

I look forward to hearing from all of the witnesses to tell us how 

we can do a good job, make good work even better in this area. 

I yield back. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

With that, again in the interest of getting in your testimony, we 

will move right to the testimony from the witnesses, and we would 

first hear from Administrator Hill. 

Mr. Hill. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN H. HILL, ADMINISTRATOR FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.; THE HONORABLE CALVIN L. 

SCOVEL, III, INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 

TRANSPORTATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.; THE HONORABLE 

DEBORAH A.P. HERSMAN, MEMBER, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, WASHINGTON, D.C.; SUSAN A. FLEMING, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, U.S. 

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, WASHINGTON, 

D.C.; CHIEF STEVE VAUGHN, ENFORCEMENT SERVICES DIVISION, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA; CAPTAIN KEN URQUHART, COMMERCIAL VEHICLE 

ENFORCEMENT, MINNESOTA STATE PATROL, MENDOTA 

HEIGHTS, MINNESOTA 

Mr. HILL. Good afternoon, Chairman DeFazio and Ranking Member Duncan and Members of the Subcommittee. 

I am pleased to describe how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety 

Administration is working to make the Nation’s highways safer 

through better commercial vehicle safety operations, and I also 

want to commend the Subcommittee for choosing State MCSAP 

agencies to testify today. Improving CMV safety without their 

strong involvement would not be possible. 

2005 had one of the lowest truck fatality rates in 30 years. This 

means that despite more trucks traveling more miles, the proportion of fatalities is down. In addition, preliminary numbers for 2006 

indicate the number of people killed in large truck related crashes 

decreased by an estimated 3.7 percent. However, we know that despite these gains, the drop in overall highway deaths involving 

commercial vehicles has still been too high. 

FMCSA uses available highway performance data to identify 

high-risk carriers using a program called the Safety Status MeasVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:38 Feb 07, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36688 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
3

urement System or SafeStat. Both the DOT Office of Inspector 

General and the Government Accountability Office have reviewed 

SafeStat and, while identifying ways the system can be improved, 

they have consistently concluded SafeStat is successful in identifying high-risk carriers. The Agency appreciates the constructive 

nature of their recommendations and is taking steps to implement 

the findings of their reviews. 

In fiscal year 2006, FMCSA and our State partners conducted 

over 15,000 compliance reviews, a 33 percent increase over 2004, 

and 3.3 million roadside inspections, an increase of 9 percent. 

While it is extremely difficult to measure deaths that were prevented, we know from past independent analysis that carriers improve safety after a compliance review or a roadside inspection. 

Working with States on complete, accurate and timely crash and 

inspection data from several years, we have implemented a variety 

of data programs to improve reporting and we have seen improvement. Between 2004 and 2007, the number of large truck crashes 

reported increased by 32 percent and the number of States achieving a good progress rating from our Agency has increased from 25 

to 40 and the number of States needing improvement has been reduced from 12 to 3. We are committed to continuing our work with 

the States in this endeavor. 

States have roles in regulating and enforcing commercial vehicle 

transportation. That makes them uniquely able to implement key 

safety programs, and I would like to highlight just one. 

SAFETEA-LU authorized the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance 

Program (or MCSAP) to be used as a traffic enforcement tool while 

not having to conduct a commercial vehicle safety inspection. The 

authority also allows reimbursement of State traffic and enforcement activities against non-commercial vehicles when the conditions exist in and around a commercial vehicle that would create 

a crash. This new initiative you authorized allows FMCSA and the 

States to involve a broader population of law enforcement to expand enforcement and reduce commercial vehicle related crashes. 

In cooperation with NHTSA, we recently implemented the 

Ticketing against Aggressive Cars and Trucks TACT program in 

the State of Washington. NHTSA’s success in combining education 

and enforcement has been proven successful in increasing seatbelt 

usage, and this similarly structured program of evaluating how 

well TACT works is something that we are seeing as an effective 

tool to use in our enforcement endeavor. 

GAO also has recently audited the program and has recommended that we do a national rollout. Currently, there are 22 

States that are involved in some manner of doing non-commercial 

vehicle enforcement activities with their grants. 

The last thing I want to mention briefly is that CSA 2010 is a 

key component of our future focus for improving identifying highrisk carriers. CSA stands for Comprehensive Safety Analysis. We 

hope to have it fully operational by the year 2010. 

FMCSA will use all safety violations to assess carrier safety in 

identified areas, not just a limited list of violations that have been 

determined to be critical or acute and by including all violations in 

a motor carrier safety fitness determination, we will be addressing 

4

one of the National Transportation Safety Board’s most wanted 

items for FMCSA. 

Another important feature of this new model is that safety assessments and fitness determinations will be updated monthly 

based upon performance data. FMCSA will no longer rely solely on 

the results of an onsite compliance review to make a safety fitness 

determination when CSA 2010 is invoked. This will allow the carrier’s safety fitness status to reflect ongoing performance, not a 

snapshot of the operational safety at the time of the onsite review. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Committee’s support of commercial vehicle safety. I look forward to working with 

you to achieve our mutual goals and would be happy to respond to 

your questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Administrator. 

With that, I would turn to Calvin Scovel, Inspector General, Department of Transportation. 

Mr. Scovel. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan, 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify today on actions taken by FMCSA to improve its oversight 

of high-risk motor carriers. 

FMCSA’s primary purpose is to reduce crash related injuries and 

fatalities involving the Nation’s over 700,000 registered motor carriers. My testimony today is based on our extensive body of work 

over the past several years. 

FMCSA has made and continues to make important progress, 

but further reductions in the fatality rate will be difficult to 

achieve. A plateau has been reached, and in some years the number of annual fatalities has actually increased. Since its establishment in 1999, FMCSA has dramatically increased its oversight activity. 

It can, however, take further steps in three specific areas. One, 

it can better target carriers for enhanced oversight through the use 

of more complete crash data. Two, it can look for ways to strengthen its compliance reviews when vulnerabilities are identified. 

Three, it can close a loophole that allows repeated violations of 

safety rules by the same carriers. 

First, better targeting for enhanced oversight: FMCSA uses a 

safety measurement system called SafeStat that primarily utilizes 

crash data along with other factors to identify motor carriers whose 

history suggests the need for greater oversight. However, many 

non-fatal crashes are missing from its database because they are 

not reported to FMCSA by the States. Such missing data can skew 

SafeStat results, so that lower risk companies are targeted for 

more oversight. FMCSA is currently working with the States to ensure that all reportable crashes are included in the risk ranking. 

Two, enhancing compliance reviews: While we have not examined the compliance review process in detail, a recent accident here 

in the Washington area highlights how compliance reviews could 

be strengthened to increase the likelihood that all safety issues will 

be addressed. This past March, a large truck owned by BK Trucking of New Jersey crashed on Interstate 495 while on its way to 

Virginia, killing a local resident, the father of two young children. 

5

The driver was operating the truck on a suspended commercial 

driver’s license. 

Due to its SafeStat ranking, BK Trucking had undergone a compliance review by FMCSA the previous month. We were told that 

while the driver’s name did surface during the review, he was identified as an independent owner-operator and therefore not subject 

to a driver’s license check. This was in accord with FMCSA’s process. 

As a result, however, the driver’s poor record which included citations in six States for speeding, defective brakes and a previous 

charge of driving with a suspended license was not uncovered during the compliance review. 

The case indicates how difficult and complex FMCSA’s responsibilities can be and that additional guidance may be needed on determining whether drivers are actually owner-operators or rather 

have simply been classified as such to avoid closer scrutiny by 

FMCSA. We further believe that FMCSA should consider expanding its compliance review to include sampling of all drivers including owner-operators to determine whether they hold valid driver’s 

licenses. 

Stopping repeat violators: A loophole in FMCSA’s enforcement 

policy has allowed hundreds of repeat violators of safety rules to 

escape the maximum civil penalties that by law can be assessed 

when a pattern of violations is noted on enforcement claim documents provided to the carrier. If certain mitigating factors exist, 

however, such as a carrier’s inability to pay a civil fine, then penalties are waived. 

When no penalty is assessed, FMCSA does not document the violation in its notice of claim. Consequently, it appears that no violation occurred. In such cases, a pattern of violations can be difficult 

to establish. A carrier with limited ability to pay then can repeatedly violate the same rule yet avoid a more serious penalty as a 

repeat violator. 

This happens often. Between September, 2000 and October, 

2004, only 33 out of 533 motor carriers or 6 percent that repeatedly 

violated either hours of service or drug and alcohol regulations received the maximum penalty. 

It is important that FMCSA establish some method to deter 

those repeat offenders who are able to avoid fines due to an inability to pay. FMCSA has addressed this problem. 

Finally, a new compliance enforcement model is expected to be 

deployed by 2010. FMCSA has been working since 2004 on a new 

model that will overhaul its systems that identify and target highrisk motor carriers and monitor their performance. 

While we have not extensively reviewed the new model, any data 

driven model would benefit from improved data completeness. 

Strong enforcement will also need to remain a significant element 

of FMCSA oversight. 

Mr. Chairman, this completes my statement. I would be happy 

to answer any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

Next will be the Honorable Deborah Hersman, National Transportation Safety Board. 

6

Ms. Hersman. 

Ms. HERSMAN. Good afternoon, Chairman DeFazio, Ranking 

Member Duncan and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you all 

for inviting the National Transportation Safety Board to testify on 

FMCSA’s oversight of high-risk carriers. 

When transportation tragedies occur, the Safety Board helps restore the public’s confidence in our systems by conducting thorough 

objective investigations and making recommendations so that those 

accidents don’t happen again. 

One year ago, Congress turned to the Safety Board to investigate 

the collapse of the ceiling panels in the Big Dig tunnel in Boston 

because of our reputation for thorough independent investigations. 

Yesterday, the Board completed our work on this tragedy, citing a 

failure of materials and management oversight and making recommendations regarding tunnel safety. 

This Committee can assist the Federal Highway Administration 

in ensuring tunnel safety by making sure they have the adequate 

authority to require regular inspections of tunnels. 

Everyday there are approximately 19,000 accidents on our Nation’s highways, causing over 43,000 fatalities and 3 million injuries every year. Accidents involving large trucks comprised about 

10 percent of those fatal accidents. 

Motor carrier accidents that we investigate are typically not 

caused by one thing. They are a chain of causes or events that ultimately result in fatal accidents. Often, these accidents involve poor 

performing carriers. It is not unusual for us to find that carriers 

involved in accidents have a number of problems. They may have 

high out of service rates, undisclosed medical conditions of their 

drivers and/or falsified logbooks. 

These traits are very telling to us because they are precursors to 

an accident. Understanding the significance of these poor safety 

conditions is the first step in preventing future accidents. 

Today, I would like to focus on three areas in which the FMCSA 

has proposals pending for improvements: the compliance review 

process, medically unqualified drivers and electronic data recorders 

for hours of service. These initiatives could make the difference in 

effectively removing unsafe carriers from the road. 

One of the major issues surrounding FMCSA’s oversight role is 

the effectiveness of the compliance review process. Carriers are 

rated on six safety fitness factors. In a Safety Board study of motor 

coach accidents from 1999, the Board made recommendations to 

elevate the factors for vehicles and drivers to ensure that carriers 

with poor ratings in either of these critical areas would not receive 

a satisfactory rating overall. 

Earlier this year, the Board completed an investigation into a 

motor coach fire near Dallas, Texas that killed 23 passengers during the evacuation for Hurricane Rita. In this particular accident, 

numerous safety violations were uncovered prior to the accident, 

yet this carrier still had a satisfactory rating. 

Another major oversight issue for the Board concerns medically 

unqualified drivers. Following a 1999 Mother’s Day bus crash in 

New Orleans in which 22 people were killed, the Safety Board 

issued eight recommendations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety 

7

Administration. We outlined a comprehensive medical oversight 

program. 

Although the FMCSA has made progress on one of these recommendations, seven remain classified in an unacceptable status. 

The Safety Board is convinced that for any commercial vehicle driver oversight program to be effective, it is necessary for there to be 

a systemic approach that addresses all of the issues conveyed in 

the eight recommendations. 

Finally, I must talk to you about how technology can help prevent fatigue related accidents. As you know, paper logbooks offer 

many opportunities for drivers to play fast and loose with the 

hours of service rules. Recognizing this lack of accountability, the 

Safety Board has recommended tamper-proof data recorders for 

over 30 years for motor carriers. 

The FMCSA this year issued an NPRM on EOBRs, Electronic 

On-Board Recorders. However, it does not apply to all carriers. The 

program relies on the FMCSA’s ability to catch poor performers 

through its compliance review program. Given the current problems with the compliance review program and the fact that 

FMCSA can only audit about 1 percent of all carriers annually, we 

don’t believe that this is the most effective way to address hours 

of service issues. 

In summary, the Board urges the Congress to support the 

FMCSA in its efforts to improve the compliance review program, to 

establish effective medical oversight and to require on-board recorders for all motor carriers. Taken together, these changes will 

begin to remove high-risk carriers from our Nation’s highways. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Now we turn to Ms. Susan Fleming from the Government Accountability Office. 

Ms. FLEMING. Good afternoon, Chairman Oberstar, Chairman 

DeFazio and Members of the Subcommittee. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss FMCSA’s oversight of 

motor carriers that pose high crash risk. This is an important 

issue. About 5,500 people die each year as a result of crashes involving large commercial trucks or buses and about 160,000 more 

are injured. 

Due to the size of the motor carrier industry, FMCSA is only able 

to conduct a small percentage of compliance reviews. It is therefore 

crucial that FMCSA identify the most unsafe carriers to either improve their operations or to prohibit them from operating. 

My testimony today has three parts: the extent to which FMCSA 

identifies carriers that subsequently have high crash rates; how 

FMCSA ensures that its compliance reviews are conducted thoroughly and consistently; and the extent to which FMCSA follows 

up with carriers with serious safety violations. By and large, 

FMCSA does a good job in each of these areas. 

That being said, we have identified areas that could be improved. 

First SafeStat, the data driven model that FMCSA uses to identify 

carriers that pose a high crash risk, is nearly twice as effective as 

random selection. Therefore, it has value for improving safety. 

However, its effectiveness could be improved through either of 

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tical approach called the regression analysis instead of relying on 

expert judgment to apply weights to each of the four areas. The 

other uses the existing SafeStat design but selects more carriers 

that scored the worst in the accident evaluation area. 

Both enhancements perform better than the current SafeStat approach. In fact, the regression approach identified carriers that had 

twice as many crashes in a subsequent 18 months than did 

SafeStat. We have recommended that FMCSA adopt this approach. 

I will now turn to my second topic, compliance reviews. We took 

a high level look at how FMCSA manages its compliance reviews 

and found that the Agency does so in a fashion that meets GAO 

standards for internal control thereby ensuring consistency and 

thoroughness in these reviews. It does so through establishing compliance review policies and procedures, classroom and on-the-job 

training of inspectors, and using an information system to document the results of its reviews, and also monitoring for performance. 

We also found that compliance reviews almost completely cover 

the nine major areas of the Agency’s safety regulations. 

Moving on to my third point, in fiscal year 2005, FMCSA followed up with 99 percent of carriers with serious safety violations 

to determine whether they had improved or to prohibit them from 

operating. In addition, FMCSA monitors carriers to identify those 

that are violating out of service orders. 

However, it does not take additional action against many violators of out of service orders that it identifies. It cited only 26 of the 

768 carriers that had a crash or roadside inspection while under 

an out of service order. FMCSA told us that it does not have 

enough resources to determine whether all of these carriers were 

indeed violating out of service orders. For example, some of these 

carriers may have leased their vehicles to others. 

Furthermore, FMCSA does not assess maximum fines against all 

carriers that we believe the law requires partly because FMCSA 

does not distinguish between carriers with a pattern of serious 

safety violations and those that repeat a serious violation. 

Finally, FMCSA assesses maximum fines only for the third instance of a serious violation. We read the statute as requiring 

FMCSA to assess the maximum fine if a serious violation is repeated once, not only after it is repeated twice. 

We are considering a recommendation that FMCSA revise these 

policies in our report that will be issued later this summer. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be pleased 

to answer any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee 

might have. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Ms. Fleming. 

Chief Steve Vaughn, California Highway Patrol. Chief? 

Chief VAUGHN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank 

you for the opportunity to speak before this Committee today. Especially to Congresswoman Napolitano, long-time friend of the 

CHP, thank you, ma’am. 

CHP provides service to the commercial vehicle industry through 

promulgation of regulations pertaining to vehicle safety, driver fitness and transportation of hazardous and other materials requiring 

special load securement. 

9

The department’s on-highway commercial enforcement program 

consists of 248 officers and 257 non-uniformed commercial vehicle 

inspection specialists which operate 16 inspection facilities and 34 

platform scales. These personnel are focused on the inspection of 

commercial motor vehicles and their drivers. 

An additional 138 personnel are assigned as mobile road enforcement officers to allow for the inspection of commercial vehicles that 

purposely avoid or due to delivery routes do not traverse inspection 

facilities or platform scales. 

The CHP’s off-highway motor carrier safety program is staffed by 

non-uniformed motor carrier specialists that are dedicated to the 

inspection of both truck and bus terminals. There are 246 personnel dedicated to this program. 

California’s BIT program, Biennial Inspection of Terminals, is 

very similar to the compliance review program conducted by the 

Feds, but there are some differences. The BIT mandates an inspection of every terminal in California once every 25 months. The Department conducts approximately 20,000 BIT inspections annually. 

In addition, we have some other responsibilities and program authorities. They fall in the annual inspection and certification of 

school bus, school pupil activity bus, youth bus and tour bus operators. There are over 26,000 school buses, 1,600 school pupil activity 

buses, 500 youth buses, 9,400 tour buses and 4,000 bus terminals 

that are inspected and certified annually by the CHP. 

We also look for motor carrier compliance with the controlled 

substances and alcohol testing of commercial drivers. We conduct 

over 11,000 inspections annually in that area. 

We also monitor the motor carriers enrollment into the California Electronic Pull Notice, a system which requires motor carriers to register their drivers with DMV and allows them to receive 

automated notifications upon changes to the drivers’ status. 

The efforts of the CHP has resulted in the most productive onhighway commercial enforcement program in North America. Between 2004 and 2006, the CHP conducted an average of 45,313 onhighway inspections each month. We believe a clear correlation can 

be drawn between our continued reduction in commercial motor vehicle mileage death rate and the program that we have. 

I was also asked to provide some thoughts based on California’s 

experience in the area of motor carrier safety on how we can improve safety across the Nation. 

First, I would recommend that FMCSA serve as a conduit between Congress and the States and industry. FMCSA needs to 

serve more as a safety agency and less as an enforcement agency. 

They should work closely with the States, which I will say they 

do, various associations such as the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, AAMVA and the American Trucking Association to develop 

new ideas for legislation and programs. This serves as a groundup approach to implementing safety initiatives and allows for the 

inclusion of the primary stakeholders prior to the passage of new 

laws, regulations or programs. 

New technology has also provided us with some excellent opportunities to improve safety. I believe Congress should consider new 

laws to equip commercial motor vehicles with safety technologies at 

the time of manufacture, items such as lane departure warning 

10

systems, rollover protection, radar forward-looking infrared systems and computer enhanced braking systems. 

At the very least, consideration should be given to applying tax 

credit incentives for motor carriers and manufacturers in this area. 

Motor carriers that are taking this upon themselves and have 

equipped their commercial motor vehicles with these technologies 

have reported a reduction in traffic collisions and maintenance 

costs. 

Also, I believe FMCSA should provide States with additional 

funding to improve or upgrade existing commercial vehicle inspection technologies. 

Finally, in cooperation with the States and motor carrier associations, FMCSA should develop a better electronic system to identify 

unsafe commercial drivers. I understand they are currently in the 

midst of prototyping an electronic driver notification system similar 

to the California Pull Notice program. I would encourage them to 

expedite the nationwide development of this system while at the 

same time being careful and mindful of the consideration of the fiscal impacts on the States and their existing programs. 

We need to retool the commercial driver’s license program for 

drivers and how it is administered by the States. I am hopeful that 

the recommendations of the Commercial Driver’s License Advisory 

Committee will be strongly considered when presented. There 

needs to be tougher medical qualifications for drivers and doctors 

and they need to be held accountable. There also needs to be mandatory driver training. 

Finally, I appreciate the Committee holding this hearing today 

and the opportunity to speak on California’s experience, and I will 

welcome any questions. Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Chief. 

I now turn to Captain Ken Urquhart with the Minnesota State 

Patrol. 

Mr. URQUHART. Good afternoon. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Chairman Oberstar, do you have anything you 

want to say at this point? You might be good to him in case you 

get pulled over going too fast on your bicycle some day. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I welcome you to the hearing and thank you for 

making the trip from Minnesota. You will probably be very happy 

to get back there given the temperature and the humidity out here. 

Mr. URQUHART. You’re absolutely right, Mr. Chairman. This 

weather you have today is weather we had the other day. 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. DeFazio and Mr. Oberstar, thank you for allowing me to address the Committee today. 

My name is Ken Urquhart. I am the Commander of our Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division in the Minnesota State Patrol. 

We are the lead MCSAP agency in Minnesota. We do subgrant 

about 35 percent of those resources to a partner agency in our 

State, the Minnesota Department of Transportation. 

Just to kind of set the tone here, Minnesota in the year 2006 had 

reached a number of fatalities in our State that was lower than 

World War II. So we had not seen that level of fatalities at that 

low point since World War II, 1945. 

11

Along with that, truck fatality crashes from 2005 to 2006 were 

reduced 17 percent, injury crashes, 14 percent and overall crashes, 

12 percent. So we are seeing a steady decline not only in our truck 

crashes but crashes across the board. 

FMCSA has set a goal for 2011 for the States to achieve a .16 

fatality rate for vehicle miles traveled. We reached .12 in 2006, and 

we have steadily declined since the year 2000. So we believe that 

our comprehensive truck safety program is working. 

I am not going to claim all the credit for the reduced fatalities. 

There are a number of variables that go into that. We all know 

that. But Minnesota is on the right track, and we are quite proud 

of that. 

As far as our data, one of the things we put into place during 

our legislative session in 2002 was to require all trucks that exceed 

10,000 pounds to register and obtain a U.S. DOT number, whether 

they operate interstate or intrastate. Along with that, these owners 

or these motor carriers that operate these vehicles even intrastate 

are not even allowed to re-register their vehicles until they update 

their MCS150. Basically, what we have accomplished there is we 

have identified the bulk of our motor carriers no matter how they 

operate in Minnesota. 

This is done us a great service in the quality and accuracy of our 

data. I think Mr. Hill talked about how States have been improving 

data. This was the primary reason that Minnesota saw an improvement in our crash data accuracy and timeliness along with our inspection data and citations. 

The other thing that Minnesota historically does is we adopt Federal regulation by chapter. So if there are changes through rulemaking or from Congress, we adopt those by chapter. We don’t 

have to return to our legislature generally every year, year after 

year, to adopt new regulations to remain harmonious with our Federal colleagues. I think this is a very efficient way to do things. We 

are lucky on that fact. 

Some of the newer programs that we have in place that we do 

give credit to reducing crashes is we implemented two years ago 

strictly a driver focused enforcement program, and that cuts across 

all lines, not only roadside enforcement with inspections but also 

with compliance reviews, follow-up compliance reviews on crashes. 

One of the things we demand is that when we have a significant 

crash, whether it is a personal injury or fatalities, we ask our Federal colleagues or our DOT colleagues in Minnesota to conduct a 

follow-up compliance review to determine what type of philosophy 

that motor carrier is operating. Did they contribute to that crash 

with a poor safety philosophy or was it strictly related to some 

driver decisions? 

We are trying to send a message to the motor carrier industry 

in our State that if you are involved in one of these things, you will 

go under the microscope. We have had a great deal of success with 

our driver focused program. 

We have instituted a fatigue detection program, and subsequently our driver out of service rate has doubled. We went from 

approximately 8 percent to 16 percent out of service on drivers. 

The industry is responding. I left Minnesota this morning, and 

in the paper yesterday was an article about a large carrier from a 

12

neighboring State that employs 15,000 drivers. Of the 15,000 drivers, they identified 10 percent of them are dealing with sleep 

apnea. What was the carrier doing about it? They got proactive, 

and they are assisting those drivers with getting treatment. 

Now we are going to see drivers with sleep apnea machines in 

their sleepers, but we all know that sleep apnea is just one of the 

issues these drivers deal with when it comes to fatigue, and we all 

know that drivers can log legitimately and still be fatigued. It is 

all based on their lifestyle. So we have implemented this program, 

and we believe that we have had great successes by removing some 

of these at-risk drivers. 

As far as our compliance reviews, we perform a significant number of compliance reviews in Minnesota. Of the State partners that 

have State personnel inputting those reviews to the Federal system, we are one of the leaders in that area. 

We feel it is very important to touch the industry on multiple 

levels again and again, and we do this not only with the implementation of the U.S. DOT number but also with our annual inspection 

program, when we recertify their maintenance personnel through 

compliance reviews, through our required inspections and audits on 

all passenger carriers, school bus operators and limo operators. 

Basically, in a nutshell, Members, I have given you what Minnesota is doing as of today, and we feel that we are on the right 

track to reducing crashes. Thank you for this opportunity to visit 

with you today. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Captain. 

Mrs. Napolitano had wanted to introduce the chief, and I had neglected to let her do that and also she wanted to make a brief opening statement. So, at this point, I am going to recognize her to go 

first with questions. 

Mrs. Napolitano. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It really wasn’t 

necessary, but I thank you for the opportunity. 

Number one, thank you for the hearing because I think this is 

something that is in the mind of many citizens throughout the 

United States about the safety on the roads. Truck traffic certainly, 

especially in California, in my area is just 25,000 trucks a day on 

I-5 and 47,000 trucks on one of the other freeways in my district, 

and these are expected to double by 2015. So it is an issue that is 

of great concern, not only to my constituency but to the rest of the 

Nation. 

I certainly want to give a warm welcome to Mr. Vaughn and regards to Commissioner Brown. We go back many years since I sat 

on Transportation in California, overlooking the use of tandem 

trailers and safety on the California highways. They do an excellent job, and I am so happy that you are here, sir, to share with 

us the experiences of the highway patrol, what I consider to be the 

preeminent law enforcement agency at least in California. 

With that, thank you, Mr. Chair. I have questions, but I will wait 

my turn. Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Now, Administrator Hill, did I read that your Agency did 40,000 

new entrant reviews last year? 

13

Mr. HILL. You read that there were 40,000 done, but we did not 

do them all ourselves. The States did the vast majority of the new 

entrant audits, sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Oh, I see. But you have increased your compliance 

reviews by a third? 

Mr. HILL. Yes, we have significantly increased our compliance reviews since 2004. We have increased it, I think, about 30, 34, 40 

percent since that time. So we are making gains, and one of the 

things I am pleased about is the States are much more involved in 

the compliance review process. 

When MCSAP, the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, 

began in the eighties, it was fashioned primarily as a roadside inspection program, and so most of the resources that were given to 

the States allowed them to build an infrastructure that would do 

inspections. But States like Minnesota and California have been 

very proactive to start getting into the compliance review arena, 

and so I am pleased that the States also have expanded. 

Mr. DUNCAN. You heard Inspector General Scovel say that he 

thinks you are working with the States to try to get more information about non-fatal crashes. Is that correct and are you close to 

achieving that goal? 

Are you receiving a lot of information from some States and no 

information from other States or what is the situation there? 

Mr. HILL. Okay. Data quality and completeness is a very important issues, and I would answer you a couple ways. 

First of all, on the 2004 review SafeStat, I think the Inspector 

General at that time encouraged us to increase our attention with 

data sufficiency. Since that report was issued in 2004, we have 

seen the number of large truck related crashes improve 32 percent. 

It went from about 100 and I think 7,000 up to 144,000. So we are 

pleased with the amount of improvement that has been made. 

The problem is we still have pockets of the Country that we have 

not been able to see that kind of data improvement. What we are 

doing internally is trying to develop programs to augment that. For 

example, States are not eligible to use some of their high priority 

funding for related activities in the MCSAP program unless they 

first use that money to address data quality. So we are using 

MCSAP data to address it. 

Then secondly, we also have created some measurement tools 

that allow the States to have a pictorial view through a map—

green, yellow and red—and determine how they are meeting data 

sufficiency. 

Then back to your original question about the non-fatal crashes, 

this is the next arena that we need to move into because we have 

not seen the kind of non-fatal crash data improvements that we 

would like. That is the next frontier for us, and we are going to 

retool our measurement system beginning later this year. We have 

got the States now, about 41 of them, are green. So now we are 

going to probably see that degrade a little bit because of the nonfatal crashes. 

I would say to you that the congress has been giving grants to 

us through the Motor Carrier Safety Assistant Program to the tune 

of $3 million this year in SAFETEA-LU, and we had $6 million of 

requests for those kinds of grants. There is a lot of interest in the 

14

States. We are trying to get the money out to them, so they can 

change their reporting systems. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I know that you also heard Inspector General 

Scovel say that we basically had reached a flatlined level and that 

it was going to be very difficult to get much more of a decrease or 

much more of an improvement in the fatality rate. Do you agree 

with that? 

In a way, it is saying that you are doing a really good job. In another way, it is saying there is not much room for improvement. 

What do you say about that? 

Mr. HILL. Well, it is a fair question, and it is what we are here 

for. We are supposed to be seeing the numbers go down, not just 

plateau. I would say to you a couple things. 

First of all, one of the concerns that I have is that we still have 

about 46 percent of the trucking population out there that don’t use 

safety belts, and so we have been trying to work with that. If we 

could save 300 and some lives every year of truckers not losing 

using their lives just by clicking their safety belt. So we are trying 

to move that agenda forward. 

I would say to you that I really believe that the future of large 

reductions in fatalities involving commercial vehicles are going to 

be technology system that Chief Vaughn referred to in his opening 

statement. I think as we see more vehicles equipped with devices 

that give the driver additional help in alerting them to upcoming 

traffic or to not deviate from their departure of their lane, I think 

we are going to see real reductions in crashes and fatalities. I 

would like to see some kind of discussion, meaningful discussion 

about incentives that would encourage companies to want to do 

that. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much. 

I will come to other questions later. Go ahead, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. 

The GAO found that 38 percent of the carriers, I believe, (768 of 

1,996) were subject to an out-of-service order in 2005 and 2006 and 

were found at roadside inspection to be out of compliance with an 

out-of-service order or were involved in a crash. Yet, FMCSA only 

cited 26 of the 768. 

I guess my question would be if someone has an out-of-service 

order and they are found at a roadside inspection or cause a crash, 

why were such a minuscule percentage of them fined? It doesn’t 

seem like a big deterrent to me, and it seems like a license to ignore an out-of-service order. 

Mr. Administrator. 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I would say a couple of things in response to that. 

First of all, there is a mechanism for States to place a driver and 

a vehicle out of service at the roadside independent of us doing it 

through a compliance review. I don’t know if the GAO study really 

addressed the roadside out of service issue or not. 

But in terms of ours, we certainly take action when we determine that it has occurred but verifying that that is happening is 

a very labor intensive process. For example, when we find that a 

carrier has been having inspection activity after they have been 

15

placed out of service, we have just begun here in the last two years 

to start citing those people for violating their out of service order. 

So we are starting to infuse this into our enforcement process, 

but in the past it was simply whenever we went in and did a compliance review did we find that occurring with the carriers that we 

were addressing and we did not. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Do you have any kind of a real time system so that 

your inspectors can input into a computer and find out that that 

carrier is out-of-service? 

Mr. HILL. Yes. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Now if they find that, on the spot, I would 

assume they would probably do two things: impound the truck and 

fine them because the truck, it seems to me, would be not safe to 

continue since they are out of service. 

Mr. HILL. If the carrier is out of service, the vehicle cannot be 

moved until that is remedied and that is done at the roadside and 

that is a process that occurs consistently throughout this Country. 

I believe that the amount of penalty they are subject to is $10,000 

for doing that. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Basically, the GAO numbers of 2005 and 2006 

don’t reflect the fact that in 2006 and 2007 that this has been a 

much more active enforcement against out-of-service companies 

when found to be out of service. 

Mr. HILL. We are beginning to address that much more rigorously as a result of the work that we are doing with the GAO and 

Inspector General. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Does the GAO have any comment on that? 

Ms. FLEMING. We haven’t looked at the 2006, 2007 numbers. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, all right. 

Another concern that was raised which I find of great concern, 

I believe this was raised by the NTSB, was the issue of what criteria would cause someone to become unsatisfactory. I guess the 

question is here, and I direct it first to NTSB and then ask Administrator Hill to comment, but I would agree with the NTSB who 

has a most wanted safety improvement saying if either a vehicle 

or a driver is in serious noncompliance, that that should result in 

an unsatisfactory rating. 

It seems to me that, gee, we have got some really great drivers 

driving really unsafe vehicles or we have got some really substandard drivers driving really spiffy new trucks. Neither of those 

should be rated, it seems to me, either conditional or satisfactory. 

Would you comment on that, Ms. Hersman? 

Ms. HERSMAN. Yes, Mr. Chairman. You have stated it well. On 

our most wanted list, we have had a recommendation that we 

issued in 1999, and it is in an unacceptable status. We believe that 

drivers and vehicles are the best indicators of how a company is 

going to perform. 

We have looked at numerous accidents including the recent Wilmer, Texas accident involving the bus operator. In that situation, 

we had a driver who had been pulled over for three roadside inspections. In two of those, he was placed out of service for hours 

of service violations. 

We have had companies that we have looked at that were involved in accidents. For example, in Indianapolis, a motor coach opVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:38 Feb 07, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36688 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
16

erator, Hammond Yellow Coach, was inspected nine times in the 

eight years prior to their fatal accident. Their post-accident compliance review revealed that 10 out of 10 of the vehicles reviewed 

were out of service. They were still given a conditional rating. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Also, perhaps for another question later, but the 

whole issue of when one is moved from unsatisfactory to conditional, what sort of oversight is conducted? 

Anybody else want to comment on this before I turn to the Administrator for his response? Does anybody else have feelings about 

the fact that if either there are significant driver problems or vehicle problems, that that should result in an unsatisfactory rating as 

opposed to having to have both? 

Okay, Administrator Hill. I am going to say that their silence 

means that they all agree with me, so you know. 

Mr. HILL. Well, you certainly have that prerogative, Mr. Chairman. I understand. 

I would just say to you that is one of the reasons why, in my 

opening statement, we are trying to deal with the NTSB recommendations through the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Let me just interrupt for a moment. But they also 

recommended, given the fact that there are questions about whether you will make 2010 and even if you made 2010, they are saying 

perhaps, in fact, I don’t think they said perhaps; they said there 

should be an interim rule addressing specifically this question. 

Wasn’t that correct, Ms. Hersman? 

Ms. HERSMAN. We would actually love for them to address this, 

but in addition we ask them to look at all violations, not just the 

acute or critical as well. This recommendation has been outstanding on the drivers and vehicles since 1999. We feel that even 

if they accomplish their goal, which we think is ambitious for 2010, 

it is still 11 years after we made our recommendation. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, Mr. Administrator. 

Mr. HILL. Okay. We believe that CSA 2010 will take that into 

account. What it will do is allow for violations to be determining 

the fitness status of a motor carrier as opposed to what we are 

doing now through a compliance review. Because we will be doing 

monthly runs of the available data, we will be able to determine 

the fitness status in a carrier monthly as opposed to having to wait 

and do an onsite review. 

The second thing I would say to you is that if you start adding 

infusing all of the violations in our current system, it is going to 

exacerbate the number of AB carriers and it is going to make it extremely difficult for us, for the resources that we have in place to 

get through all those carriers. Then you are going to be calling me 

up and asking me, well, why aren’t you getting all the AB carriers? 

What you are going to be doing is adding several what I would 

consider violations that certainly are serious but may not point to 

the crash problem that GAO is pointing out in some of their work 

where they want us to focus on the crash data in SafeStat as opposed to just all these other violations. So I have got to walk between both recommendations, focusing on all violations and focusing on serious crash data as well because generally we think that 

the crash data contributes most to the future prediction of what is 

going to happen. 

17

Mr. DEFAZIO. I understand the GAO’s position on the algorithms 

or whatever it was they want to develop, as I was falling asleep 

reading it on the airplane. It is very important, but I was having 

a little trouble. It must take special writing classes to work at 

GAO, but the information is there if you can stay awake through 

it. 

It just seems to me though, and it is kind of a common sense 

point that I think NTSB is making here. I don’t know whether 

GAO would even disagree with that. They want to use the crash 

data as an indicator, but if either the trucks or the drivers aren’t 

safe, it seems to me those are two pretty darn critical factors. 

I don’t know if there is anybody up there who wants to disagree 

with that. I mean having one or the other, either people who have 

repeated violations and/or suspended licenses and are still operating or having trucks that have been found to be unsafe to operate, either of those seem to be pretty darn critical. 

Would GAO, even though you want to look at the crash data and 

analyze backwards from that, is there any disagreement with that 

common sense approach which is not quite as scientific as yours? 

Ms. FLEMING. Compliance with safety regulations basically helps 

predict future crash risk. We just found that past crashes are a 

stronger predictor of future crashes than compliance with the safety violations. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. I think they made a movie about this where 

the policemen arrested people before they committed crimes, and I 

can’t remember the name of it. 

Mr. Administrator, if you were to go back and apply this to a 

couple, the Beltway crash here, the bus crash in Texas, you would 

say, gee, those companies should have been and in fact I believe 

at least one of them was a number of times unsatisfactory because 

of these problems. 

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I agree with you. 

Here is my dilemma. If we implement an interim final rule right 

now and change the system, it is going to create quite a bit of disruption, I think, in the way that we do this with the industry. 

I am trying to focus on getting the CSA 2010 done because I 

don’t really want to be judged on not getting it done. I want to be 

judged because I think we are going to get it done. We have met 

every time line internally. We are on budget. We are moving forward. We are going to pilot test this next year in four States. 

So we are committed to getting this safety fitness determination 

remedied as the NTSB wants it done. I just think we need to do 

it in a very open manner. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. My last question, because I am over my time: Can 

you move to full implementation, without legislative changes, to 

the CSA 2010? 

Mr. HILL. We believe that we can. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. That sounds a little tentative. 

Mr. HILL. Well, no. Here is what I want. We believe we can, but 

we are also in the process of developing three rules. We don’t believe we can with our current regulatory scheme. We do believe we 

can statutorily. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. 

I guess I didn’t get the order on your side. Who was here first? 

18

Mr. Poe was here first. Okay, Mr. Poe. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have some questions, a lot of them. I will try to get through 

as many of them as I can. 

On March 29th, 2006, 26 girls from Beaumont West Brook High 

School in my Congressional district were riding a coach, a motor 

coach, to the Texas State Soccer Playoffs, and the bus flipped over 

on its side, killed two of them. Most of the others were injured. 

Some of them lost their limbs. I met with those parents yesterday 

in my office to discuss safety of school kids on buses. 

I, like any parent, always assumed coach, a motor coach, was 

safer than an old-fashioned yellow school bus. It turns out that is 

not true. School buses are safer than motor coaches because of the 

way they are built with these massive windows that break and kids 

go flying out which is what happened with these soccer players. 

My concern is two-fold. One, what is being done, if anything, to 

implement lap seatbelts on school buses or buses period that transport school kids, not just the yellow school buses but motor coaches? 

Texas actually has passed a law now that school buses that 

transport kids are going to have to have lapbelts for 2010, I think. 

So I would like to know if we are moving in that direction. 

I have heard all the arguments. It costs too much and all of that, $6,000 a school bus to implement these belts. But when you start 

transporting kids, I think their safety is paramount to the cost and 

if there is anything on the national movement that is being done 

to implement this. 

Then I have a question or comment about the bus that was 

transporting more people from my district during the Rita situation 

that caught fire and people burned to death on the bus because 

they couldn’t get off. The driver was illegally in the Country, and 

the bus didn’t pass any inspections. So we will get to that question 

second. 

Who wants to weigh in on the seatbelts or lapbelts as they are 

called? 

Mr. HILL. Well, I will start, and they can fill in. 

Mr. POE. I will start picking on you if you don’t volunteer. 

Mr. HILL. I would just say to you that there has been a considerable amount of discussion about this. The manufacturing standards 

dealing with safety belts in commercial vehicles are handled by the 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I know that they 

are currently looking at several different related recommendations 

as a result of the Wilmer incident that Ms. Hersman referred to 

in her opening statement. 

Secondly, from our perspective in the Motor Carrier Safety Administration, we enforce the operational regulation. Our role would 

be consultive and not to be prescriptive. 

Mr. POE. Do you have an opinion? Yes or no, do you think they 

ought to be on motor coaches? 

Mr. HILL. No, I don’t have an opinion at this point. I would have 

to look at some of the data. 

Ms. HERSMAN. Congressman Poe, I will jump in here. I actually 

this morning spoke at a summit that NHTSA is holding on seatbelts on school buses, and the Safety Board has taken a position 

19

regarding occupant protection both in school buses as well as motor 

coaches. These issues are on our most wanted list. 

The motor coach issues deal with keeping passengers inside the 

vehicle, addressing the windows, roof crush strength and redesign 

of the passenger seating compartment to restrain passengers. 

With respect to school buses, the Safety Board has launched on 

a number of school bus accidents. We have quite a bit of information about those investigations. Last November, we elevated to our 

most wanted list a recommendation to NHTSA to redesign the passenger seating compartment for school buses in an effort to try to 

make them safer. School buses are very safe, but any fatality is one 

too many when it comes to the children that we transport. 

Mr. POE. In the redesigning of the school bus, are you talking 

about using these lapbelts? Is that what you are talking about or 

something else? 

Ms. HERSMAN. No. The Safety Board is not prescriptive with respect to the type of restraint or occupant protection standard that 

might exist. 

As you are very familiar with—it sounds like you have focused 

on this issue—compartmentalization is the current passive form of 

restraint on school buses. The Safety Board has recommended that 

they look at occupant protection, potentially a redesign of the entire seating compartment. 

There were presentations today at the safety summit about seatbelts, but we think that there are a number of issues including 

sides of the buses, the roof, coming in contact with other children, 

the sides of seats. All of these materials are not designed to absorb 

impact energy in a lateral crash or a rollover. We think that they 

need to look at the entire system. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

We are going to have to recess. They have called a series of 

votes. Unfortunately, because of the way they have set it up, there 

is going to be a motion to recommit, a couple of 15 minute votes. 

It is going to take 50 minutes, 50, and as soon as possible we will 

return. 

I hope all the members of the panel can stay. I have had a number of people including the Chairman express very strong interest 

in having a round of questions. So if you absolutely have to go, we 

might understand anyway. 

With that, the Committee stands in recess. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thanks for your tolerance of our ways around here 

on the schedule. It seems we could condense some of that. But, in 

any case, I have a few more questions, and I know other Members 

will be arriving shortly and they do. We wanted to make the best 

of your time that we could. 

Oh, I see Mrs. Napolitano, and she hasn’t had her turn yet. 

So I will turn to you, Mrs. Napolitano. Thanks. I was just going 

to fill up the time, hopefully productively. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. But you are recognized. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was unavoidably detained speaking to highway patrol, one of our guests. 

20

Mr. Scovel, listening with great intent, the number of accidents 

that you say that are happening, what are the major causes? 

We know fatigue. We know the training. We know the truck 

maintenance, all of that. What is the major issue and how can we 

address it? 

How can we without adding more laws? There are already 

enough laws on the book. 

Is it personnel? What is it that we need to be able to address 

what everybody has identified is an issue? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Thank you, Mrs. Napolitano. 

Based on the work that my office has done both on the investigation side and on the program audit side, we believe a prime focus 

should be on the driver. We concur with NTSB that certainly a significant concern is with the vehicle and vehicle maintenance and 

integrity, but for us our attention has been focused on the driver. 

When we talk about the improvements that FMCSA and the Department and the industry and our State partners have made in 

driving down fatality rates and fatality numbers and the fact that 

we may now have seen that curve bottom out, we look to see where 

improvements may still be achieved. We think by focusing on 

human factors. 

You mentioned fatigue. Inattention, speeding, use of illegal drugs 

or alcohol, those are all areas where we should focus as well as 

technology, electronic on-board recorders and perhaps collision 

avoidance systems should also, well, we believe they must be implemented as well and industry-wide to the extent possible. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, Ms. Hersman had indicated that 30 

years ago, it was recommended that tamper-proof safety logging design be used. Is that something that might help be able to reduce 

fatigue, the driver malfunction, if you will? 

Mr. SCOVEL. I think she was referring to tamper-proof electronic 

on-board recorders. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Right. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Which would help us in terms of documenting hours 

of service and preventing falsification of logbook entries. In my 

notes today, I have half a dozen large truck fatality cases that my 

office has recently worked or that are still open, and a consistent 

theme in every one is hours of service violations coupled with false 

logbook entries. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Vaughn, not too long ago, California had 

a problem with a truck that missed a turn somewhere in California 

and burnt down a whole segment of a freeway. Could you tell me 

what the findings were in relation to the driver? 

Was it the design? Was it driver fatigue? What did you find or 

can you talk about it? 

Chief VAUGHN. That investigation is still continuing at this time. 

What I can say about that was the driver had a very clean driving 

record. He had no citations or accidents on his record. 

At the time of the accident, we had GPS that we were able to 

go back and look at. He was maintaining a speed of 62 miles per 

hour which is greater than the speed limit for commercial vehicles—they are 55—but it is not an excessive speed by any means 

at that time in the morning with traffic out on the roadway. 

21

We found that the driver did take an action, a turning movement 

to move into a traffic lane, went a little bit further than he intended, shifted back to the left, and it was at that point, we believe, that the fuel shifted, causing the vehicle to go onto its side. 

That is not a final. That is a preliminary. The final investigation 

will be completed here shortly. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. So, in essence, it could have been the shift of 

not just cargo but the fuel itself. 

Chief VAUGHN. Yes, ma’am. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Ms. Fleming, you indicated the statistical approach has been 

helpful in being able to bring down the number of fatalities. Are 

the fines not enough to be able to get some of these folks to understand how serious it is that they put not only their own lives in 

jeopardy but others? 

Ms. FLEMING. I think it is a function largely of the nature of the 

commercial trucking industry. You have millions of drivers, hundreds of thousands of carriers out there, and FMCSA basically can 

only conduct a small percentage of compliance reviews on an annual basis. 

So what they really have to do and what we recommend is that 

they have to look for the most effective means to target their resources. What we have found with our statistical approach as well 

as an alternative enhancement is that past crashes are the best 

predictor of future crashes, and so we believe that targeting those 

very scarce resources both at the State and Federal levels in that 

regard is likely to result in more compliance with safety and better 

or I should say less accidents. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Do you have enough support system and infrastructure personnel to be able to do follow up on those? 

Ms. FLEMING. You mean in terms of FMCSA? Again, I think it 

is because they have only have a small set of resources, and so it 

is very important for them to target those resources. 

It is promising that with CSA 2010, their initiative, they are 

looking for ways to, if you will, get the biggest bang for their buck. 

We think that is a promising step, so that they can get a better 

sense and touch most unsafe drivers and carriers, and they are 

looking for ways to more effectively do that. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will wait for the next round. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. 

Mr. Platts. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your 

chairing this hearing and all the witnesses’ testimony. 

I apologize with not being here earlier as many of my colleagues, 

having to be in several different spots at once. 

I have a question to Administrator Hill, and it is a follow-up to 

a conversation we had earlier this year that relates to motor carrier safety and not necessarily high risk as directly focused here 

but the general issue of safety, and that is the CDL licensing process. 

When we talked back in March, the Agency was looking at the 

revisions to the CDL requirements with the thought that perhaps 

late spring or early summer, we would see a proposed rule on new 

22

regulations that would, in my word, toughen the requirements and 

strengthen the requirements to ensure that our drivers out there 

of the heavy trucks are well qualified and well trained. 

Can you just give me an update of where we stand on that issue 

with those proposed new regulations? 

Mr. HILL. Yes, Congressman Platts. I believe that when we had 

our conversation, you were talking specifically about two issues, if 

I remember correctly, the merger of the medical piece to the CDL 

process. We did issue a notice of proposed rulemaking concerning 

merging those two items together which is something that we 

haven’t had in the past. 

Right now, if a driver has a medical qualification, he is required 

to have that every two years. That is done separately than the licensing process. So that will merge that. 

The other thing that we talked about, I think, was the driver 

training. 

Mr. PLATTS. Right, right. 

Mr. HILL. We are in the process of finalizing that. In fact, I believe it has just cleared within the Department. We will be sending 

that to OMB for a notice of proposed of rulemaking and once they 

get done with the review, there should be a notice of proposed rulemaking out very shortly on the training of entry level drivers. 

Mr. PLATTS. Right, the primary focus is the training of that entry 

level driver. 

Mr. HILL. That is correct. 

Mr. PLATTS. With that going to OMB, is there a time frame? I 

know it is out of your control when it goes to OMB, but do you 

have an estimate? 

Mr. HILL. Well, generally, they take the 90 days to review a proposed rule. I am hoping that later this year we can have that on 

the streets and get it open for the public to comment on. We believe. There has already been testimony today, and I believe that 

the industry is very interested in this issue. 

I am excited about seeing how they respond to the proposed rule 

in light of how the court admonished us to take into consideration 

certain factors that were not in the previous rule. 

Mr. PLATTS. As far as your sending it over, would that be before 

the end of this month that it will go to OMB? 

Mr. HILL. I believe that is an accurate statement. Could I get 

back to you faithfully on that? 

Mr. PLATTS. Yes. 

Mr. HILL. I would like to check with somebody in the Department to make sure, but I was told verbally yesterday that it had 

cleared the Department and will be going to OMB. 

Mr. PLATTS. Okay. I appreciate that. I think it ties into the better job we do up front with that entry level driver and the training, 

then that ultimately addresses the broader issue here of high-risk 

carriers and their ability from the get-go that they then build on. 

I think it is important that we move forward certainly in a responsible but as expedited as possible process as we can. 

Mr. HILL. Congressman, I would just say to you that in addition 

to that, later this year we are hoping to have a notice of proposed 

rulemaking out that will deal with the commercial driver’s license 

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cause it incorporates some of the requirements from the SAFE Port 

Act for trucking that was passed in 2006 that specifically talked 

about the three recommendations that the Inspector General made 

to us about CDL fraud and addressing fraudulent activity. 

We are going to build that into that rule as well. We think that 

these two rules will strengthen the entry level piece of the commercial driver’s license process. 

Mr. PLATTS. You or your staff, when they follow up with the specifics on the time frame, if they could also provide additional information on that aspect of the second proposed rule, that would be 

great. 

Mr. HILL. Okay. You are welcome, sir. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Administrator. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. 

For Inspector General Scovel, the question is about crash data 

and my understanding is that you have reported on problems with 

the reporting by the various States to the Feds. Now GAO is recommending that we put greater weight on crash data. I guess I 

would like both of you to respond to that. 

It seems to me, first, we need to be assured that we are getting 

the most accurate, up to date and timely crash data if we were 

looking at that sort of a change. What are we doing to remedy this 

problem with the States, Mr. Scovel? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Thank you. I would agree with you that it ought to 

be a stepped process. It would seem to me to be most advantageous 

if data quality were to be maximized to the greatest extent possible 

and then weighted appropriately to reflect the degree to which accident information is a predictor of future accidents and safety problems. 

If it were to be the other way around, I think we would be magnifying the impact of incorrect data which certainly would be to the 

detriment of the industry, to the traveling public and to FMCSA 

certainly eventually. 

Our focus has been specifically on the quality of non-fatal crash 

data. 

Administrator Hill has talked about the State safety data quality 

map which right now looks pretty good. It is important for the 

Committee to note that the data that is represented on that map 

that has been provided by the States specifically regarding crashes 

pertains only to fatal crashes. It doesn’t yet reflect non-fatal crash 

data. Non-fatal crash data is important because it is a determinant 

of what motor carriers will undergo compliance reviews. 

We believe what is needed and we have recommended to FMCSA 

that they follow up and it is currently an effort that is underway 

to undertake a data quality study by the University of Michigan 

Transportation Research Institute, determine what the quality of 

data submitted by the States has been. We are informed that 

FMCSA proposes to complete that by the end of 2008. Based on 

that, clearly there are initiatives that can be undertaken in connection with CSA 2010. 

But, in the meantime, a kind of back to basics approach would 

also be helpful, we believe, and that means working with State officials to improve the training that they provide to their people in 

24

the field when they are reporting crashes and also simply by looking at the forms that the States use in reporting this information 

to FMCSA. All of those, we think, would be helpful in improving 

the data quality that is so important in terms of determining which 

carriers will undergo compliance reviews. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Ms. Fleming, do you share some of those 

concerns about the quality of the data? 

Ms. FLEMING. Yes, sir, we do. Our results pretty much mirror the 

DOT’s results, the IG’s results. We found problems with the timeliness, the accuracy and completeness of the data. 

In terms of how we were using the data, which again was to try 

to identify the high crash carriers we found that late reported 

crashes had minor effects to the SafeStat model as well as a regression approach. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Another point I believe you raised, Mr. 

Scovel, was you mentioned something about compliance reviews 

looking at all drivers, I believe. Did you not? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Yes, Mr. DeFazio, we did. We made that recommendation—I should offer this caveat—based not on a full-scale 

audit but based on our observations of the BK Trucking accident 

case this past March here in the Washington, D.C. area. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I am not that familiar with this kind of contract 

status or owner-operator status that the person involved had and 

how that company related to them. Is this legitimate arms-length 

contracting or is this something like we find in some other areas 

of industry where essentially you are kind of complying, trying to 

beat IRS rules here and determine who is contracting, who isn’t? 

For instance, all the cab drivers in New York are contractors, but 

they go and get the cabs from the same place every day. Is it something like that we are looking at here? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Regrettably, it may be. I confess that my office 

hasn’t done an in-depth study. We don’t know the extent of the 

problem in the industry, but we think it is worthy of FMCSA’s attention that their inspectors, first of all, get some guidance, some 

detailed guidance as best we can prepare it on delving into the relationship between drivers and a company undergoing a compliance 

review. 

Right now, FMCSA’s process is that company drivers, that is, 

company employees only are subject to commercial driver license 

checks. The loophole, as we have identified it, is that companies 

undergoing compliance reviews, if they have bona fide contractors 

or if as you say it is more of a subterfuge, then they know that 

under current FMCSA process, those contractors, independent 

owner-operators aren’t subject to license checks. 

That is specifically what happened in the BK Trucking case. 

Compliance review completed in February. Accident, tragic accident with fatality in March. Driver surfaced in the February review but didn’t undergo a license check because he was listed by 

the company as an independent owner-operator. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Now what do you mean surfaced, meaning the 

company has to list all of their company drivers and their contract 

drivers at the time of the compliance review? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Correct. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay, so the name was known. 

25

Mr. SCOVEL. The name was known. He was known to be a driver 

for this company. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So why, Administrator Hill, wouldn’t we, if we 

knew that someone was contracting with someone who has such a 

bad driving record, somehow take that into account? 

Mr. HILL. I think that is the important point to start with. First 

of all, when our safety investigator went in, they have to establish 

a relationship that there is in fact an owner-operator. What we 

found was the investigator went into the company owner, and the 

owner said those people don’t work for me. They are independent 

operators. 

We said, well, they are showing up on the profile. We looked at 

the lease agreements, and that was our flaw. We did not have the 

kind of detailed assessment of that lease agreement that really 

bound them together in that contractual relationship. 

As a result of that, we are now instituting training all across the 

Country for all of our safety investigators to better understand 

leases which is a part of the legacy of the old ICC that we really 

didn’t follow through on as well when we moved into the safety environment. 

The second thing that we have done as a result of the BK Trucking issue is that we sample now. Any company with 20 drivers or 

less, we are going to run CDLIS list checks or commercial driver’s 

license checks on all of those drivers, period. What happened also 

is that in this case, this driver might not have been a part of our 

sampling protocol because we had such a small sample. 

We are just saying, look, 20 drivers or less, we are going to run 

all of them on the CDLIS check. We are not going to mess around 

with this. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. If there were more than 20, why wouldn’t 

you run them all through that checklist? 

Mr. HILL. Based upon our data and the MCMIS file, 90 percent 

of the carriers have 10 trucks or less, and so it is a function of 

workload frankly. I mean if you go into Schneider and you have 

1,500 drivers, it is going to be a little tough to do all their drivers. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right. We know about problems with drivers that 

come to the attention of Federal inspectors, but what about the 

State data? As with the accident reporting, is it incomplete in 

terms of violations and suspensions within States? 

I mean is there a good national clearinghouse where any and all 

the States report any and all violations by any and all commercial 

drivers within their States, and you have a centralized record that 

your folks can refer to? 

Mr. HILL. There are two ways, and I would also certainly welcome the other two participants to communicate on this. 

Violations are recorded through our Motor Carrier Management 

Information System which is a compendium of all inspections done 

in the Country, and they have access to that at the roadside. That 

is assuming they have connectivity and can access it. So they have 

access to all the commercial vehicle violations on an inspection report. 

The second piece is if a driver is convicted of an offense, that 

goes to their CDL record, and so violations to the driving record are 

26

available through another program called CDLIS which is the driver, and all States can access that as well. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. All States are required to report to it. 

Mr. HILL. That is correct. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Are they generally faithfully reporting on a timely 

basis? 

Mr. HILL. We do compliance reviews. That is a different term 

now. 

We go in and do a review of States on their CDL compliance with 

these issues, and we have found some problems. But it is getting 

much better because MCSIA when it was passed, it required States 

to do that. We have found several States to be in what we would 

consider substantial non-compliance which means they were in 

jeopardy of losing highway funding, not just MCSAP funding, and 

they rallied around the pole and became compliant. 

We are seeing improvement in that area, but it is still something 

that we are watching during a compliance review process. We do 

15 States a year in that review process. So every three years, a 

State gets reviewed. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Anybody else on the panel have any thoughts on 

the drivers, driver’s licenses, or reporting offenses? 

Mr. URQUHART. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes. 

Mr. URQUHART. Since we have adopted the matrix on critical violations that impact a commercial driver’s license holder’s record, we 

have seen an increase in our State of masking and deferring, and 

generally that comes from our court system. Those drivers convince 

the court that there is a livelihood issue there, and so the reporting 

is interrupted well before it gets to the Department. 

Just to add to this discussion, aside from CDLIS, we are still 

dealing with commercial operators that aren’t required to have 

commercial driver’s licenses when they operate vehicles above 

10,000. What we do see in our State from time to time is local law 

enforcement doesn’t recognize what a commercial vehicle really is 

in accordance with the definition. 

So we do miss some of those things, and it is an educational 

thing both on the side of the courts and also with local law enforcement. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. To Mr. Vaughn, in California, you actually go out 

to each of the sites of the trucking companies and do on-site inspections. I am curious—there is probably no way we could do it here, 

but I was looking at your roadside out-of-service rates comparable 

to the Federal statistic. 

Then I am trying to figure out, well, if they are actually going 

to the sites, has that diminished the number of trucks that are 

found out of service that are California-registered or Californiabased versus those that are transiting your State? Is the fact that 

you have a comparable number due more to the transiting trucks 

or is there the same percentage of trucks that are domiciled in the 

State? 

Do you know what I am getting at? I am trying to figure since 

FMCSA doesn’t come anywhere near that and you are doing it, I 

am wondering if it has any sort of preventive effect. 

27

Chief VAUGHN. We believe that it does, but again we would have 

to go back and look at that statistically. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We would have to do a regression analysis on it 

or something. 

Chief VAUGHN. Yes. What we do know is we do not do compliance 

reviews in California. We do the BITs as you indicated, and we are 

out there once every 25 months. There are approximately 1.3 million vehicles that are registered in California and 1.8 that can pass 

through from out of the State. 

To determine that, we would have to go back and back some 

runs, but we can do that because that is an interesting point. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes, I am just wondering if we can show that it 

has an impact. Then we would perhaps want to incent other States 

to do that somehow and help deal with it because I find it disturbing when you find that large of a percentage of trucks that 

until the moment they were stopped and looked at, they had a potential for a defect. It just seems like a high number. 

If I could just go back to the Administrator, a question about the 

BK issue that is not clear in anything I have received. It was in 

and out of compliance: it was rated unsatisfactory; it was conditional. it was satisfactory a number of times over a number of 

years. But then as soon as the fatal accident occurred, inspectors 

returned and they were then out of service. 

I am just curious. I mean, I am disturbed about that because it 

seems almost to represent what those of us who are familiar with 

the FAA have called the tombstone mentality which is we get there 

after the fact and we begin to apply extra scrutiny that wasn’t applied before the fact. The unfortunate thing is someone died in the 

interim. 

Can you address that issue with that company: How someone 

moves back and forth so much; what sort of scrutiny or additional 

scrutiny is put on the conditional folks; how it was that they had 

a relatively recent inspection and they were not put out of service 

but then as soon as the fatal happened, they were put out of service? 

Mr. HILL. Okay. First of all, I would just say that when a carrier 

is rated as unsatisfactory, we are required then to put them out of 

service within 61 days if they are a freight carrier or 45 if they are 

hauling passengers or hazardous material. 

Therefore, the company has significant impetus to want to get 

that remedied. They are going to be very responsive to the requirements that we put on them because they know that they can’t 

make any money and generate revenue while they are out of business. So they are going to be responsive. 

Then once they get into, as you just described, the conditional 

mode, then we put them into a categorization that we have, a 

group of people dedicated to do conditional carrier reviews. Frankly, Mr. Chairman, they are competing for the workload of those 

SafeStat A and B carriers that we are also required to do which 

you have read in the GAO report and other things as well. 

Let me address specifically the BK trucking and why that happened the way it did. When our investigators went in, in April, the 

owner of the company withheld information and said the owner-operators are not representative or a group, and therefore their data 

28

was not considered as a part of our safety assessment of that company. When we went back in and included those owner-operators, 

there were problems that began to filter into the process that were 

not in existence before. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, but your normal procedure would not, for 

trucking companies of more than 20, include owner-operators. 

Mr. HILL. Yes. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. It would not include them. You don’t rate them. 

Mr. HILL. No, no. We rate anyone, anyone that we go in and do 

a compliance review for, regardless. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Well, I thought that that was the issue here, that 

because they were owner-operators, that person’s name had come 

to the attention of the inspector, but they said, okay, well, we won’t 

look at that person because they are an owner-operator. 

Mr. HILL. And so, the violations associated with those owner-operators were not held against the carrier. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, but they weren’t held by your policy before 

the accident, but they were after. 

Mr. HILL. That is because we established a relationship during 

the subsequent interview, and a more in-depth analysis of those 

lease agreements bound those two together which we did not find 

in the first. I told you earlier that we identified it as a deficiency. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So there is a policy change here. 

Mr. HILL. It is really a training issue. I mean the policy didn’t 

change. It is just that our people should have detected that lease 

arrangement and then made the motor carrier responsible for those 

owner-operators which they did not do in the first case. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Okay. Basically, when the company owns the vehicles and is leasing them to someone, they would be now considered 

part of that company’s record. If it was legitimately just a contractor, legitimate owner-operator, someone who is truly independent, they wouldn’t be considered. 

Mr. HILL. That is correct. The owner-operator typically moves. 

They are going to work for either themselves, the owner-operators, 

or they are going to be working under someone else’s authority 

wherever they can get the loads. What typically happens is they 

work in these relationships with the motor carrier, and the motor 

carrier becomes responsible then for that owner-operator’s driving 

and operational activities. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. They would then have an obligation. Do they have 

access to the database to determine whether this person has violations or suspensions elsewhere? 

Mr. HILL. Before they ever bring them on in that relationship, 

they are required to have a driver qualification file and do a 

records check. They are supposed to establish they have drug testing. They are supposed to monitor that driver’s performance, absolutely. They become responsible for that driver. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. In this case, the owner had knowledge of this person’s problems, but didn’t take any action and allowed the person 

to operate. 

Mr. HILL. I would just say I don’t believe that. They had done 

a driver qualification check on that license before the employer 

hired that owner-operator which they are required to do once a 

year. But after the person has a suspended license, the driver, the 

29

onus is on the driver to notify the employer or the carrier, that 

they have had an action taken, and that is a problem. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. The once a year, I assume is this a relatively routine inputting of the CDL number into a computer? 

Mr. HILL. They are supposed to do it. Actually, you get a motor 

vehicle check from the DMV. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, so I mean it isn’t costly. It is not particularly time-consuming. 

Mr. HILL. No. He did that, but this suspension occurred after he 

had done that initially. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Right, but that is because of the once a year. 

Mr. HILL. That is correct. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. What I am getting at is maybe we want to require 

that this be done with more frequency rather than depending upon 

the driver to self-report. 

Mr. HILL. Well, I will tell you that we are working to try to provide access to our system to the motor carriers that will allow them 

to have much more ready access to driver information. I am hoping 

that later this year we are going to be able to explain to the industry how we are going to make this information available to them. 

We already have done it with law enforcement through something called our Driver Information Resource, and we have categorized all the driver violations. Instead of doing it by carrier, we 

have done it by the driver. So now there is going to be much more 

ready access, and we are going to try to roll that out to the industry next year. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I would be very interested in that, and I would 

want to encourage and help facilitate that in any way possible. I 

think it would be very valuable information for the industry to 

have. I mean there are a few bad apples out there, and we want 

to get those off the road and not have them impugn the rest of the 

industry and the rest of the drivers. That is what we need to target. 

If there are any problems moving that forward, I would be very 

interested and I would like to help deal with that. 

I have some questions about basically the limited ability to pay 

issue, in the case of serious violations and how that works. I mean, 

what we consider to be limited ability to pay. Obviously, you don’t 

want to take a true independent who has a violation and put him 

out of business for that. 

But where you have serious offenses, repeat offenses, how much 

does this ability to pay weigh in? If someone is so fragile that they 

can’t pay a substantial fine for a serious violation, then you have 

to question what other corners might they be cutting. 

Mr. HILL. As you have referred to, there are statutory factors 

that we have to consider when we make fines make fines and penalties. Based on that general guidance, several years ago, the Agency drew up what they call the Uniform Fine Assessment Program. 

I am going to tell you that I am not real deep on this, but I will 

be glad to get with your staff and provide them the information. 

It is a factor. I don’t think it would be characterized as being as 

seriously flawed as maybe your question would indicate, but it is 

a factor that we have to consider. What we could do is we could 

show your staff how that plays out and how that Uniform Fine AsVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:38 Feb 07, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36688 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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sessment works with all I think it is nine statutory factors that we 

have to consider, and some of them are subjective. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. All right, okay. All right, I think, although the 

staff may have an important question. Hold on one moment. 

Well, Chairman Oberstar had hoped to get back but has been unavoidably detained by other business, so he won’t. He wanted to express his regrets and again wanted to thank the Captain because 

he wants to make sure that when he is going really fast on his bicycle downhill sometime and you guys clock him, he won’t get in 

big trouble for it. 

Does anybody else on the panel have something that they weren’t 

asked about that they really think would benefit the Committee, 

open-ended? 

Okay, all right. Well, with that, I again want to thank you for 

your patience and your time and your expertise, and we all hope 

to have a safer system in the future. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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