IT PAYS TO BE SAFE
No. 29, July, 2010
Driver Fitness
This is the third in a seven-part series on the categories that will be used by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to judge truck drivers as to their safety rating under the CSA 2010 safety behavior analysis known as BASICS (Behavioral Analysis & Safety Improvement Categories).
This week's category of driver fitness has nothing to do with what kind of physical shape a driver is in. Rather, driver fitness pertains to the operation of trucks by drivers who are unfit to operate a truck due to lack of training, experience or medical qualifications.
Data that will be used by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration includes (1) inspection violations for failure to have a valid and appropriate commercial driver's license, medical card or training documentation; (2) crash reports in which the police officer cites a lack of experience or a medical reason as a cause or contributing fact of the accident; and (3) violations from an off-site investigation or an on-site investigation at your trucking company for failure to maintain proper driver qualification files or the use of unqualified drivers.
While you as a driver have little ability to control on-site investigations and driver qualification files, you certainly play a large role in how a police officer may interpret the causation of a crash and whether it pertains to a lack of experience or a medical reason.
Section 383.113 provides the basic skills and knowledge that each truck driver is required to have. A short list would include: knowledge regarding safe vehicle control; shifting; backing; the importance of visual searches; communication; speed management; space management; night operation; driving in extreme conditions; the perception of hazards; emergency maneuvers; skid control; the relationship of cargo-to-vehicle control; and as always, vehicle inspections.
After reading this week's It Pays to be Safe, it would be a smart move by any driver to review §383.111 and §383.113 of the Federal Motor Carrier Regulations, that you carry in your truck, regarding each of the areas that you are expected to know about when it comes to operating your tractor/trailer.
Drivers are going to be individually scored. Estimates are currently made that there are over 175,000 drivers who will be eliminated from the work place through the CSA 2010 reviews. You don't want to be one of those thousands of drivers anticipated to be lost in the industry.
It pays to know the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Act and to know what is expected of you as a driver, and as always, it pays to be safe.
