ASHBURN, Va. -- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration adopted a series of updates last month to its Safety Measurement System, which the agency uses to prioritize carriers for interventions such as compliance reviews.

Parts of the SMS "enhancement package" were implemented in direct response to bus and motorcoach industry input, according to Wesley Barber, transportation specialist in the FMCSA commercial passenger carrier safety division.

"The (FMCSA) administrator (Anne Ferro) has taken into account the concerns your industry, in particular, has shared with us," Barber said at the 9th Annual United Motorcoach Association Safety Management Seminar here.

One change involves renaming one of the categories the agency uses to rate the safety of a motor carrier. What had been the Fatigued Driving BASIC (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category) will now be called the Hours of Service Compliance BASIC.

"We got a lot of comments, particularly from the passenger carrier industry, that this category -- this BASIC -- was misnamed," said Peter Chandler, team leader in the FMCSA office of enforcement and compliance.

"This category takes hours-of-service record keeping into account, and just because you're not filling out your log correctly doesn't necessarily mean youre fatigued."

Another change involves applying equal severity weight to electronic and paper logbook violations.

Previously, paper and electronic logbook violations carried different weightings. The SMS enhancement aligns them with the same weight of one.

"We've changed the weight down to one for paper logs and electronic logs so its consistent," Barber noted.

The definitions of passenger carriers also have been clarified, Chandler said.

"We weren't really treating private owner carriers of passengers accurately," he said.

"A passenger vehicle operated by a private passenger carrier, in order for that to be subject to our jurisdiction, has to be designed to be used to transport 16 or more people.

"We found in the old system we were considering 9-15 passenger vehicles and 1-8 passenger vehicles by private passenger carriers. So, we're bringing that into our new definition and better describing and addressing passenger carriers that are subject to our jurisdiction."

Specifically, the updates added all for-hire carriers with 9-15 passenger capacity vehicles, and private carriers with 16 or more passenger capacity vehicles, since these vehicles clearly fall under FMCSA authority.

They also removed all carriers with 1-8 passenger capacity vehicles, and private carriers with 1-15 passenger capacity vehicles, since they generally are not under FMCSA authority, effectively removing many taxis, limousines, and vans.

"Also, we recently changed the definition of passenger carrier to better define carriers that are actually transporting passengers and doing it on a primary basis," he said.

Therefore, carriers that are primarily trucking companies, but might have some passenger carrier services, were removed if less than 2 percent of their fleet consists of passenger vehicles.

The Unsafe Driving Basic has been updated, by removing all speeding violations of one to five miles per hour over the speed limit from the SMS.

"The regulations allow a five-mile-per-hour variance in the speedometer, and we thought it wasnt fair that the regulations allow a five-mile-per-hour variance" but would penalize carriers for a speeding violation within that range, Chandler said.

Similarly, the severity weight for speeding violations that do not specify by how much the speed limit was exceeded was reduced from five to one.

Within the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC, the updates removed vehicle violations found during driver-only inspections, and removed driver violations found during vehicle-only inspections.

When the FMCSA updates SMS, it generally does so at regular intervals and with a number of changes at a time, Chandler noted.

The next set of SMS changes is currently under development, according to an FMCSA document on its website. The agency is considering comprehensive modifications to roadside violation severity weights, recalibration of the utilization factor used to incorporate vehicle miles traveled for the Crash Indicator and Unsafe Driving BASIC, and adjustments to safety event groups in all BASICs.

Bus operators are strongly encouraged to check their safety data at http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms to see how the changes may have impacted their SMS results.

For complete details on the latest SMS changes, go to the Compliance, Safety, Accountability website at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/.