The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has published a proposal in the Federal Register to improve the quality and uniformity of violation data across FMCSA systems. The proposed changes will allow court outcomes on contested citations to be incorporated in the Agency’s Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) database. These changes would impact how violations are displayed and used in the Safety Measurement System (SMS) and the Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP).

The Agency is proposing that, in early 2014, motor carriers and drivers could request inclusion of adjudication information for citations associated with violations in MCMIS inspection reports by submitting Requests for Data Review (RDRs) through FMCSA’s DataQs system (https://dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov). Motor carriers and drivers would have to upload court outcome documentation in order for the States to review the RDRs and record the court outcomes.

FMCSA’s SMS and PSP would, correspondingly, reflect court outcomes. These systems would retain the violation when it resulted in a conviction; remove the violation when found not guilty or the violation was dismissed; and indicate the violation when the court outcome shows a conviction of a different charge. When the court outcome shows a conviction of a different charge, the SMS severity weight tied to the violation will be reduced to the lowest possible value (1).

The Federal Register Notice provides additional information about FMCSA’s proposed new processes for documenting in its data systems. The 30-day comment period will end on January 2, 2014. We encourage your feedback on the proposed changes. (https://federalregister.gov/a/2013-28795)