The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it will focus research on whether police reports of truck-involved crashes can be used to determine fault, what benefits such determinations could have on judging carriers’ overall safety and how FMCSA could manage the process. Anne Ferro, FMCSA’s administrator, told a meeting of state trucking association executives the research into police reports “will attempt to determine whether they provide sufficient, consistent and reliable information that can be used to determine the carrier’s role in a given crash.” FMCSA will also study whether giving different violation scores in the CSA program based on crash fault would improve highway safety.

 FMCSA will complete the research next summer and then seek public input after releasing the results. In March, FMCSA announced it was delaying a planned crash accountability system rollout after complaints that the system should not rely on police reports. Ferro said the study is a first step and noted more needs to be done.