Commercial Safety

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Commercial Truck Insurance and the FMCSA: Who Controls Insurance Rates?

Many laws and conventions exist that are put in place to govern the safety and policies of the trucking industry and, by extension, the trucking insurance industry.

Laws such as these exist on both the state and the federal level.  Specialized government agencies have been created over the years to draft legislation based on research, statistical data collection, and analysis of the commercial trucking industry.  While these initiatives are designed for safety, they can have an indirect effect on commercial truck insurance rates.

This data collection and analysis is used in an effort to reduce the occurrence and severity of commercial vehicle crashes and improve the safety of the drivers.

One such organization is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).  It is the responsibility of this organization to not only collect data and enact new safety policies, but to enforce them as well.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

The FMCSA is the newest organization, established in January of 2000, involved in commercial trucking and ultimately commercial truck insurance rates.

The responsibilities of the FMCSA include conducting studies on roadside practices and technology, analyzing trends in cost and fatalities in commercial vehicle crashes, and even implementing policies related to environmental considerations.

The most current program being implemented by the FMCSA is the controversial Compliance Safety Accountability 2010, or CSA 2010.  This program assigns a public score to motor carriers based on a number of safety factors.   Motor carriers are assigned a number score between one and one hundred based on traffic violations and involvement in traffic collisions.

Many see this as an unfair practice because these scores do not take into account whether the commercial driver was at fault in any such incident, just that he or she was involved.  This is seen as potentially harmful, especially for its possible effect on commercial trucking insurance rates.

About the Author

Patrick Winchester is a freelance writer with commercial truck insurance expertise.  Need to save on truck insurance while keeping legit coverage? Visit http://royaltytruckinsurance.com

Which issues could improve commercial air safety most that are easy or cheap to implement?

Ryan P said in a recent post;

You seem to have a bit of an obsession with 'pax aircraft fires'. There are far more addressable issues which could easily save more lives.

First, nothing in aviation is cheap or easy to implement.
To get anything changed, first there has to be a NPRM (notice of proposed rule making) where the public has a chance to respond to (not including emergency rules), then a hearing on how the rule will be implemented, and to whom, and who may be exculded, then a benefit/cost analysis, then a meeting to address how these will be paid for, then a meeting with the FAA to get their feedback, then argued in court by the airlines because they dont want to incur any more costs that will take away from the bottom end, then the increased costs to passengers to recoup some of these new rules.
But aside from this, there are a few things that could help, one is having more direct nav flights, more ATC controllers to inhnace air traffic, implement more CAT III C Approaches at more Class B airports to decrease weather delays, utilizing smaller underserved airports to ease congestion at the metropolitan airports, Faster/easier passenger screening, offloading and loading on jetways when gates are full instead of having a/c sit and wait on the tarmac for over an hour waiting to deplane.

Embrace Life - always wear your seat belt