The one thing that CSA 2010 will accomplish - which is why the government enacted CSA 2010 in the first place - is a reduction in fatality and injury crashes. And although the trucking industry has already done a great job in this regard, it continues to be a focus because that's what you hear on the local news - when a truck has a bad accident involving multiple fatalities. CSA 2010 will force carriers to be safer, more compliant, the drivers will become more conscientious, and the drivers and carriers that refuse to get behind the program, probably shouldn't be on the road anyway.

If a carrier is found to be deficient in any category, and a driver gets pulled over for speeding, the officer will go to their computer to enter in that driver's DOT number and it's going to show the carriers most recent score and then tell the officer that the carrier has deficiency ratings in two other categories. So even though the only reason the driver got stopped was for a speeding violation, it can now turn into what is called an off-site, focused investigation - meaning that in the deficient categories that are recognized by the computer (let's say it's fatigued driving), the officer will now require that driver to show their hours of service log book and they will also conduct a full maintenance inspection because those areas were recognized in the carriers CSA 2010 score as being deficient.

So now, what started out as a speeding violation, could easily promote an inspection, meaning no that speeding ticket will also be part of the CSA 2010 scoring, along with whatever s found during the inspection. So a driver will no longer be able to get away with speeding and then paying the ticket and moving on. It now has the potential to promote an unplanned inspection-so drivers need to be more aware of the posted speed limits and how they're driving the truck.

Not necessarily. I think the strength of a carrier's programs will dictate the level of experience and point values of the new drivers they hire on. Carriers don't inherit the points a driver acquires prior to joining them, but they do inherit the history of the behavior of that driver, so that's what they have to be aware of. Bringing a driver on board with a few extra points on their list into a good program may absolutely be a worthy cause.

For example, let's say the driver has a good safety record with no accidents and no moving violations, and most of the points they acquired were the result of poor maintenance on the part of the carrier they were with. Well, with you being a carrier with a strong vehicle maintenance program in place, you know you'll be able to eliminate a lot of those and should be able to bring this driver on without concern.

On the other hand, a driver with a history of moving violations (speeding is the #2 violation found in inspections) will need a little more work. But if they're coming from a paper environment and you're brining the driver into an electronic environment, you should be able to improve their scores, so I think there's going to be a necessity for HR groups to be very active to make sure they keep their staffing levels to where they need to be.

The biggest difference between CSA 2010 and SafeStat is the only thing reported to SafeStat is an out of service violation, whereas with CSA 2010, ALL road side inspection information - good and bad - is used to populate the CSA database. That being the case, I recently took a look at the 2009 statistics from the FMCSA web site and I saw that 10 violations represented fully 80% of the total number of violations issued; and of those 80%, five were hours of service related.

That's going to be crucial moving forward. As an example, the number 1 and number 3 violations in '09 were - Form and Manner, and Record of Duty Status Not Current. In an electronic environment, those two violations virtually don't exist. And even if they were to exist in an electronic log book environment - for example, a driver forgot an entry of some sort that's required in the electronic environment - even in a Form and Manner in the CSA 2010 Fatigued Driving scoring, it's only a 1-point valuation versus a 2-point valuation for anything happening in a paper environment.

So if you're a carrier that continues to use a paper system, you're going to find yourself at a severe disadvantage versus carriers in your pier group that have made the move to electronic logs, virtually eliminating their exposure to those types of violations. And because that represents 5 of the top 10 violations, it could be substantial when it comes to you pier group rating, so I think more and more carriers - as we transition into the CSA 2010 scoring environment, I think more and more carriers - even though they my have a great SafeStat rating - will find themselves deficient in one or two categories, resulting in additional interventions from a CSA 2010 scoring stand point.