WASHINGTON — Congress has given the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration a tight timeframe for removing from public view CSA information regarding carrier alerts or percentile rankings.

Lawmakers ordered the scores and rankings to be removed from public view the day after the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act becomes law.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law Friday because the current extension of MAP-21 expires at midnight that day.

The bill passed by both the House and Senate says FMCSA must keep the scores private (carriers would have access to their own data) until the agency completes the corrective action plan requirement as listed in FAST and until the agency satisfactorily addresses issues raised in a 2015 General Accounting Office report that said modifying the CSA program would improve the ability to identify high-risk carriers.

The FAST Act says FMCSA must commission a DOT Transportation Research Board study of the accuracy of CSA’s Safety Measurement System in identifying high-risk carriers and predicting future crash risk and severity. Furthermore, within 18 months, FMCSA must submit the study to Congress and 120 days later, a corrective action plan to address deficiencies identified in the study.

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