The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) earlier last week (March 17) unveiled a smartphone app that displays safety data on carriers, and itโs already being roundly blasted by one of the industryโs leading organizations, which calls the app โirresponsible.โ
The app, QCMobile, allows a user to look up a carrierโs percentile rankings in the DOTโs Compliance Safety Accountability program, licensing and insurance information, safety ratings and crashes with a a search of a DOT number or carrierโs name. It mirrors information in the agencyโs Safety Measurement System portal. Despite the trucking industryโs concerns over the quality, quantity and consistency of the data used to form the SMS rankings, the agency markets the app as one that could be used by โinsurers, brokers, freight-forwarders and others interested in reviewing โฆ registration and safety performance information of motor carriers.โ
Thatโs what has drawn the ire of the American Trucking Associations (ATA), which is urging people to not use QCMobile. On its Facebook page, the ATA said:
โThinking of using the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrationโs new app to examine a โชโtruckingโฌ companyโs CSA score?
โDonโt.
โRead this statement from ATA spokesman Sean McNally:
โTodayโs announcement by FMCSA is recklessness cloaking itself as transparency. The Compliance, Safety, Accountability system was designed to better target potentially unsafe carriers, but a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last year characterized CSA safety scores as often being unreliable and imprecise. Early this month, in testimony before the U.S. Senate, GAO said the system suffers from a number of data quality and sufficiency issues and therefore โdoes not effectively identify high-risk carriers.
โWe urge the public not to use this app given the serious flaws in CSA that have been identified by GAO and others.’โ
ATA has called on the agency to immediately remove this tool from the marketplace.
FMCSA says the app โ available on both Android and iOS devices โ can be used by inspectors and enforcers and could help expedite inspection decisions, as it requires no log-in, whereas inspectors now must log in to databased to obtain information.
