Interview
FMCSA Administrator Annette Sandberg
Oliver B.Patton
Washington Editor
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is supposed to be examining new entrants into trucking and catching those who do not comply with safety requirements. But its net is mostly holes.
Since it began enforcing the New Entrant rule last January, the agency and its state partners have audited about 10,000 applicants for safety compliance — and cleared practically all of them.
That, says FMCSA chief Annette Sandberg, is not right.
"One of my objectives is to revamp New Entrant. In my opinion, I did not think (the rule) was tough enough."
The current New Entrant rule will remain in effect, but Sandberg intends to amend it by proposing a new rule next year — a rule that is considerably tougher. "I believe that when you go in and do an audit, if somebody has acute or critical violations, then what you do is you stop. To me, that's a sign of a failure, particularly if there's more than one."
Sandberg, who replaced former Administrator Joe Clapp earlier this year, spoke in depth on this and other issues in a recent interview at DOT headquarters.
For now and the near future, the top priority at the agency is the hours of service rule (see related stories). But Sandberg also has to worry about money and administration, as well as such meat-and-potatoes issues as making sure the rules work. For the indeterminate future, the agency will be operating on an outdated budget. Its new budget, which contains funds for expanded programs, is sitting in limbo while Congress figures out how to pass its massive highway reauthorization program.
HDT: Congress sets the agency's agenda. But if you were calling the shots — as a safety professional — what would you do?
Sandberg: If I got to set the agenda, every state would have a primary seatbelt law. For every one percentage point of seatbelt use that we get in the United States, that's 250 lives. That's significant. If you look at secondary states versus primary states, there's a difference of about 11 percentage points in usage. So that's pretty significant.
We know that we need increased seat belt usage in commercial drivers. A study that [we've released] shows 48% usage. That's abysmal, especially when the overall population usage is 79%. So we need to get these guys to buckle up. It's just as important that they go home at the end of the day as it is everybody else. When they're involved in a one-truck crash, what we're seeing is a very significant number of them dying from being ejected out of the vehicle. The seatbelt is the simplest mechanism for saving a life in a crash. You won't save everybody, but you'll save a lot.
HDT: Imagine it's your last day on the job at the agency, and you're looking back on what you've done. How will you know whether or not you've been successful?
Sandberg: I will have seen the fatality rate drop even more than it has now. Our goal is to reduce the fatalities by 41% from 1996 to 2008. That's going to be a tough goal for us. That gets us to a rate of about 1.65 fatalities per 100 million commercial vehicle miles.
HDT: That's a change from the goal the agency had under Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater.
Sandberg: Yes. The old goal was to reduce fatalities by 50%. We changed it to a rate-based goal (because it) didn't account for the increase that we are seeing in commercial vehicle miles traveled. Overall vehicle miles traveled increases at about 2.8% per year, and we're seeing commercial miles-traveled at about 3.4%. So, it's a pretty big difference.
We lost almost 5,000 people last year, attributed to commercial vehicle fatalities. If in my tenure we even reduce it by one — I want it to be much, much less than that — that's that many people more that go home at the end of the day. And we've got to remember that each of those numbers is a person. Having been a police officer on the street, I know what that looks like.
HDT: How does your background in law enforcement help or hinder you? (Sandberg, who is an attorney and has an MBA degree, was chief of the Washington State Patrol from 1995 to 2001.)
Sandberg: I think some people would say it might help me [because] a component of our program is enforcement. You can do as much education as you want but if you [don't] have enforcement on the back end, you're not going to take care of the bad actors. A lot of people want to comply. The people who understand the rules and know what the rules are, a majority of them, like the average citizen, will comply. It's the group that — no matter what— they figure that in order to cut costs they're going to cut safety first. That's the group we need to get to. From an enforcement standpoint, that helps me.
Some people might say it's a hindrance, because I'm coming from too much of an enforcement background. I kind of counter that in that when I was chief of the patrol in Washington, I was on one of the first state police agencies that developed a community policing theory and philosophy inside our organization — educating and working together with communities to identify and find root-cause solutions to a problem, rather than just dealing with the symptoms.
So that's the perspective I bring. I know we can only enforce on a small percentage. There are far more trucking companies than we have enforcement officers, even if we exponentially use our state partners and try to reach to them. Our best bet is to use community policing perspectives or theories, and that's working together with ATA, the trucking associations, other trucking groups and saying here's the data, here's what the problem is, how do we address this together and come at it from a holistic solution?
I have told trucking entities that if I don't need to regulate, I'd just as soon not regulate. Because I think that's the last action we should take — to write more regulations. If we don't need to enforce then I don't want to enforce. I would prefer to try to make sure that everybody has the information they need at their fingertips so that they know how to comply.
HDT: Do you think you have the right balance now — sufficient enforcement capacity to take care of the challenge as you've framed it?
Sandberg: I'm sure anybody would shudder if they thought that we needed more enforcement folks. I think probably more what we need is better data systems, so that we're honing in on the right things (and) on the right people.
Sometimes I think that we're using a sledgehammer to pound in a nail, so to speak. Our compliance review process [is] so cumbersome and so long. We go into a company for three, four, five days, depending on the size of the company and what we're going in there for, when there is potentially a way for us to be more surgical. Clearly we need to get more timely data, more accurate data, so that we know we're looking at the right companies for the right reasons. Our systems aren't quite responsive enough. That's one of the things that I really want to work on.
HDT: What is your view of the relationship between the agency and the trucking industry?
Sandberg: I would say for the most part that it's really good. We're on a tightrope. I desperately need industry help if we are really going to get to the safety goals. But at times I know that they don't see us as a true partner, because we are the regulator, because of the role that we are given statutorily. So I think that my biggest challenge is saying: OK, I have these mandated functions that I have to do, but in the course of doing that, is there a way that I can work together with you up front? One of the things that we're trying to do is engage the industry earlier in the rulemaking process.
HDT: What do you say to people who charge that the agency is in the pocket of the industry?
Sandberg: I've heard that, I have had people say that to me. I've had people tell me that I've sold out, coming from a law enforcement standpoint. I tell them that at the point that the numbers change, then maybe that would be a legitimate criticism. But when we see that commercial vehicle fatalities are the only classification of vehicle that has a downward trend, I say we are doing the right things. If that means bringing the industry in and working together with the industry, then we're heading in the right direction. I don't think you can argue with that.
Washington Report continued...
