From our friends at the Airforwarders Association (have you registered for AirCargo World 2014 yet?):
Yesterday, the General Accountability Office issued its long-awaited report criticizing FMCSA's Safety Measurement Score methodology as limited because of insufficient information, which reduces the precision of SMS scores. Based on GAO's analysis of available information, most regulations used to calculate SMS scores are not violated often enough to strongly associate them with crash risk for individual carriers. Second, most carriers lack sufficient safety performance data to ensure that FMCSA can reliably compare them with other carriers.
The Airforwarders Association became concerned with this issue because increasingly, SMS Methodology is being used by the plaintiff's bar to sue shippers, brokers and forwarders up the supply chain as well as to seek punitive damages from carriers large and small. There is good indication that our opposition to SMS methodology was prophetic and that more and more segments of the industry are coming to understand the problem.
GAO recommends that FMCSA revise the SMS methodology to better account for limitations in drawing comparisons of safety performance information across carriers. We hope the FMCSA responds to these recommendations by revising the program and implementing GAO's suggested changes.