transportationreport
coverage levels. And it could expose
shippers and freight brokers to enormous legal risks in the event of a
fatal or serious accident involving a
carrier they’ve selected and if a jury
finds that they failed to give CSA
scores sufficient weight when evaluating the driver and carrier.
Concerns over legal liability seem
to be playing a role in carrier choice.
A late 2011 shipper survey conduct-
ed by Morgan Stanley & Co. found
that 55 percent of those polled were
afraid to use a carrier if even one of
its seven BASIC scores came in above
the CSA threshold. If those shipper
attitudes become more entrenched, carri-
ers with a positive safety history but a
CSA-related ding or two may be black-
balled and pushed out of business,
according to the program’s critics.
A WORK IN PROGRESS
CSA is considered a “work in progress” by
critics and supporters. But no one expects
it to be rolled back, and whether it gets
improved to its critics’ satisfaction is an
open question.
In addition, even those with serious
doubts about the process still endorse the
program’s overarching objective of yanking the bad actors off the highway stage.
“Even the carriers that don’t like CSA
know it’s important to get unsafe drivers
off the road. As long as bad drivers are out
there, it is bad for the industry,” said Jim
Angel, a former driver, fleet owner, and
manager who is now product manager for
PeopleNet Communications Corp., a
Minnetonka, Minn.-based company that
provides automated fleet monitoring
services and is active in CSA compliance
work on behalf of carrier clients.
Angel, a supporter of CSA, said it will
play a critical role in keeping the roads
safer. However, he is sensitive to the worries of shippers and third-party logistics
service providers (3PLs) that a jury could
find them “vicariously liable” for damages
resulting from an accident involving a
carrier that they thought was in good
safety stead.
“I agree with those who say that this
sucks,” he said. “But our legal system has
brought us to this point.”
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IGNORING THE SCORES
One large 3PL, Dallas-based Transplace, is
coping with CSA by—on the advice of its
attorneys—largely ignoring the scores in
evaluating its carriers’ safety record. Tom
Sanderson, Transplace’s president and
CEO, and a leading critic of the CSA, said
the company could still face legal risks
even if it uses a carrier’s scorecard as tabulated by the SMS.
Sanderson said Transplace instead relies
on a “disclaimer” shown on FMCSA’s
website stating that carrier data shown in
the SMS should not be used to “draw conclusions about a carrier’s overall safety
