WASHINGTON Delays by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in adopting key rulemakings related to the new Compliance, Safety, Accountability program could undercut the initiatives effectiveness significantly, says a new report by congressional investigators.

The Government Accountability Office said that, while the FMCSA has partially implemented its new safety measurement system (SMS) and an expanded set of carrier interventions, the agency still cannot use CSA safety ratings to get unsafe carriers off the road because it has not completed the process of writing and issuing the rule needed to do so.

"FMCSA is roughly two years behind its original target date for issuing and completing the rulemaking required to use SMS to determine a carriers fitness to operate," the report said.

"Until the rulemaking is completed, FMCSA will not realize one of its most important goals for CSA - enhancing its ability to assign safety fitness determinations to a significantly greater portion of the motor carrier industry than it currently is able to do."

The CSA program is intended to replace FMCSAs SafeStat system, which has been used since 1997 to determine a motor carriers safety fitness rating.

CSAs safety measurement system already rates carriers and drivers in seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs.

While SafeStat counted only out-of-service and select traffic enforcement violations, the new safety measurement system incorporates all safety-related violations recorded in roadside inspections.

FMCSA expects the CSA program will assess a larger portion of the motor carrier industry and increase the emphasis on driver safety. The agency also expects to use data to identify unsafe carriers and drivers earlier to address safety problems before crashes occur.

"It is too early to definitively assess the extent to which CSA will improve truck and bus safety nationwide," the GAO said.

"Data from a pilot test suggest that SMS and the expanded range of intervention tools provide a more effective means of contacting these carriers and addressing their safety issues."

However, CSAs success depends on the availability of sufficient inspection data for carriers, GAO added.

"CSA has the potential to identify higher-risk carriers under more precisely defined areas of safety performance, and FMCSA has an expanded range of interventions to follow up with them," GAO said. "Collectively, these changes offer the potential to improve safety. However, not all carriers are inspected, and larger-sized motor carriers are likely to have more inspections and thus more likely to be ranked under SMS than smaller-sized motor carriers."

GAO said small carriers are less likely to receive enough roadside inspections to be scored and ranked in the safety measurement system.

For example, about 48 percent of carriers with 51 to 500 vehicles, and about 71 percent of carriers with 501 or more vehicles have sufficient ranking in the Unsafe Driving BASIC, but only about 1 percent of carriers with five or fewer vehicles do, GAO said.

The report also said the agency has not yet completed a key technology to fully implement the interventions and provided training on interventions yet to be implemented, nor has it addressed staffing issues and completed efforts to help staff shift to "a new safety enforcement paradigm."

GAO noted that U.S. Department of Transportation officials would not say if they agreed or disagreed with the GAOs recommendations but said USDOT would consider them.

According to the latest agency report on rulemakings, the delayed Carrier Safety Fitness Determination proposed rule is expected in February 2012, and the final rule sometime in 2013.

"According to FMCSA officials, they delayed the rulemaking because of needed changes to SMS that arose during the pilot," GAO said. "In addition, they indicated that FMCSA has a backlog of other key rulemakings that has affected its ability to complete the CSA rulemaking."

Overall, GAO said that the CSA program shows potential for improving motor carrier safety and, in some areas, the agency performed well as it implemented CSA, most notably in conducting extensive outreach to carriers.

"Our interviews with 55 carriers indicated that 23 had learned about CSA from a variety of sources, including FMCSAs and states outreach efforts and state trucking associations," the GAO said.

"However, 32 of the carriers indicated they were not familiar with CSA. Of these carriers that had never heard of CSA, 12 were small carriers, 15 were medium and five were large."