Sources: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration; National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, Alexandria, Va.; CP staff
The new Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP) enables commercial motor vehicle drivers or owners to submit a Request for Data Review covering eligible events from August 2019 forward. By formally clarifying crash conditions or circumstances, it stands to bring greater accuracy and fairness to FMCSA Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) and Safety Measurement System (SMS) mechanisms for critiquing driver or carrier safety performance.
CSA and SMS records previously indicated crashes regardless of fault or preventability. CPDP and its Request for Data Review provision, however, formalize a process for excluding crashes determined to be non-preventable from CSA and SMS. The program considers 10 crash types or circumstances eligible for review:
- Struck in the rear
- Wrong direction or illegal turns
- Parked or legally stopped
- Failure of the other vehicle to stop
- Under the influence
- Medical issues, falling asleep or distracted driving
- Cargo/equipment/debris of infrastructure failure
- Animal strike
- Suicide
- Rare or unusual
National Ready Mixed Concrete Association Safety, Environmental and Operations Committee and Government Affairs staff have long sought a process such as CPDP, owing to the incompleteness of CSA and SMS crash documentation, plus negative impact on producer members experiencing non-preventable mixer, dump or cement tanker crashes.
Related article
FMCSA crash preventability efforts open accident fault discussion