WASHINGTON A former chief of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says the agency should develop a mechanism for giving commercial vehicle operators an early peak at their rating before a new safety monitoring system is fully implemented later this year.

Annette Sandberg, who headed the FMCSA during the early years of the Bush Administration, said officials at the agency should provide carriers with a procedure for seeing what their safety scores would look like under the new Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010.

Sandberg said fleets need at least three to four months before CSA 2010 goes live to clean up their data.

"If they're not in a pilot state, they have no idea what they look like," she said.

While the FMCSA has been focused on the safety impacts of CSA 2010, it has not really been concerned about the financial impacts on fleets, Sandberg said.

For example, will operators with high scores be shunned by potential customers?

Under the CSA 2010 system, which has been under development by the FMCSA for three years, bus and truck operators will be under additional scrutiny and scored with more refined criteria.

CSA 2010 uses seven Behavioral Analysis Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs, to evaluate operators. As a result, carriers that had good scores under SafeStat could find themselves "deficient" in areas under CSA 2010.

The FMCSA currently is pilot testing the CSA 2010 program in a half-dozen states.

Sandberg made her comments during a conference call hosted by the investment firm of Stifel Nicolaus. She provided her thoughts on the pressing regulatory issues facing commercial vehicle operators.

Sandberg, a principal at TransSafe Consulting, said she expects the FMCSA to issue a final rule on electronic onboard records by the end of summer, possibly earlier. A draft electronic onboard recorder rule currently is being evaluated by the White House.

The rule is expected to require recorders for carriers that fail to meet hours-of-service standards, and also encourage voluntary use of recorders by various incentives.

It also will spell out new performance standards for the devices, taking into account the technological developments that have occurred since the current voluntary rule was established more than 20 years ago.

Sandberg believes EOBRs "will probably be mandated (for all truck and bus operators) in the next five years, if not sooner."

Sandberg said that while a lot of operators don't like EOBRs because they're expensive and they don't want to be monitored, she also noted that many companies already have GPS units in their vehicles, and its a small step from GPS to EOBRs.

Regarding other issues, including reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, the U.S.-Mexico border dispute, and driver health and drug testing, Sandberg said these items have been delayed or put on the back burner because of other legislative priorities.