WASHINGTON -- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration plans to conduct a year-long analysis to determine if a carriers role in a crash is a better indicator of future crash risk under the agencys Comprehensive Safety Analysis safety program.

The agency says its Crash Weighting Research Plan is a focused initiative for updating the 100,000 annual state-reported crash records to include a determination of a motor carriers role in a crash.

According to the agency, crash reports submitted by the states do not include a determination of whether the motor carrier is responsible for causing the crash.

The FMCSA, which has long held that the current process of including all crashes a motor carrier encounters to be a good predictor of future crash risk, said it recognizes that additional crash data might further sharpen the ability of its Safety Measurement System to identify carriers that pose the highest risk.

The Crash Weighting Research Plan includes:

A broad study of police accident reports across the nation to attempt to determine whether they provide sufficient, consistent and reliable information that can be used to determine the carriers role in a given crash and what other information, including input from other entities in the outcome of a crash determination, should be used to supplement police accident reports for maximum reliability.

Analysis to determine if the carriers role in a given crash is a better indicator of future crash risk. If so, the analysis will determine the impact of weighting crashes differently in SMS.

Review of research from similar programs in other countries (for example, Canada) to understand their analysis, processes and applicability to SMS.

The executive summary of the FMCSA Crash Weighting Research Plan is posted on the CSA website at http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/documents/CrashWeightingResearchPlan_7-2012.pdf.

Results of the study are to be available in the summer of 2013.

Based on the results, the FMCSA will develop the agencys plan for determining a carriers role in a crash and the potential use of the new information in the agencys safety programs including the SMS.

The SMS replaced SafeStat to determine which fleets should be considered for closer monitoring and safety inspections.

In late June, language was added to the CSA website at -- http://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov -- that underscores the lack of crash responsibility in crash data.

"Weve added language to all our websites to more clearly articulate (the fact that) crash information doesnt include preventability information," said Bryan Price, FMCSA senior transportation specialist.

According to the information section of the CSA main website, "a caveat is placed wherever Crash Indicator-related values are shown. The caveat states: A motor carriers crash assessment (Crash Indicator BASIC measure and percentile) and the list of crashes below represent a motor carriers involvement in 24 months of reportable crashes without any determination as to responsibility. "