Other, however, believe this may simply be just another version of determining “crash risk.” Experts have described the IRT approach as an emphasis on the “safety culture” of a motor carrier. Under IRT, weaknesses across a carrier’s operations may result in a low safety evaluation. The end result may be a singular safety score for motor carriers instead of today’s percentile rankings. This IRT shift is intended to abandon CSA’s “crash risk” approach for a general, though statistically sound, sense of how well fleets value and implement safety across all aspects of their business. IRT will likely end safety categories, called Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASICs), and will move away from the “peer group” comparisons among fleets. Properly used, IRT brings mathematical validity to what have been controversial assessments under FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS), such as severity weights for violations.
Under congressional direction, FMCSA is adopting the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences to adopt the “item response theory” (IRT) methodology for evaluating fleet safety. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is in the process of overhauling its Compliance, Safety Accountability (CSA) safety program.