Fostering a Safety Culture in Small Motor Carriers

Congress recognized a safety problem with new motor carriers. The MCSIA of 1999 mandated a new entrant program. FMCSA‟s research demonstration project, “Fostering a Safety Culture in Motor Carriers,” focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of fostering development of a safety culture in new entrant motor carriers. Most of them are too small to have a safety department. FMCSA sponsors the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Commercial Truck and Bus Safety synthesis program. Synthesis Report 14, titled “The Role of Safety Culture in Preventing Commercial Motor Vehicle Crashes”, reported that the existence of a safety culture is very important to safe operations of motor carriers. The report concludes that the literature does not provide any information on how to promote adoption of a safety culture in motor carriers too small to have a safety department. During 2005 – 2006, under a contract with the State of Montana, supported by an FMCSA new entrant grant to Montana, proactive training was provided to new entrant motor carriers prior to receiving their Safety Audit (SA) by the State of Montana. Many lessons were learned from that training. In 2009 FMCSA issued a cooperative agreement to perform a carefully constructed research demonstration building on lessons learned from the 2005-6 effort, and information available from TRB and FMCSA. Specific goals of this effort include: - To foster development of a safety culture in new entrant carriers, that dominantly are too small to have their own safety function, - To improve safety performance measures, - To reduce crashes, - To reduce the number of carriers that fail their Safety Audit under the new criteria of the new entrant final rule, and - To help new entrants succeed economically so the above safety goals are achieved. As a part of this research effort, it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of the training. This measurement includes: - Analyzing effectiveness of the training provided to new entrant carriers in the 2005 – 2006 timeframe, and - Analyzing the effectiveness of the new training being developed that will be provided, in the 2010 – 2011 timeframe, including comparing it with the effectiveness of the training offered in the 2005-6 timeframe. This paper addresses the first point, namely it reports on initial analysis of results from training provided to new entrant carriers in the 2005 – 2006 timeframe. It includes: - Additional background into the Problem Definition, - Background on the New Entrant Training provided to Montana New Entrant Carriers in the 2005 – 2006 timeframe. 2 - An overview of the initial data analysis plan, - A description of changes to the data analysis plan discovered by analysis of the actual data, - A summary of the results of the data analysis, and - Conclusions This document also includes appendices that provide additional detail about the methods used and the actual analysis performed.