The Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee (MCSAC) is a Federal Advisory Committee that was initially chartered on September 8, 2006. Its mandate is to provide advice and recommendations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) about needs, objectives, plans, approaches, and accomplishments of the Agency’s safety and compliance programs. The MCSAC membership is composed of up to 23 representatives from the motor carrier safety advocacy, safety enforcement, industry, and labor sectors. The MCSAC is comprised of stakeholders who, while they may not always agree, are each deeply committed to improving highway safety, working together to develop consensus recommendations.
In its 18 years of existence, the MCSAC and its subcommittees have held 53 public meetings. In its first nine years, 42 meetings were held; over the last nine years, the group has only convened 11 times, and twice (2022 and 2024), the group has not convened at all. Over the years, it has discussed many topics that are critical to motor carrier safety, to include the Compliance, Safety Accountability Program, FMCSA’s Strategic Plan, driver and crash risk, CDL issues, Hours of Service and fatigue, Automated Driving Systems, Driver health and wellness and sleep apnea, Controlled substances and alcohol, Review of regulatory guidance, Beyond Compliance, Safety technologies, and Financial responsibility, among many others – essentially the entirety of the major safety regulations.
Based on this data, gathered from MCSAC website, the committee has released 38 publications and reports, but only 3 since 2018. It is clear there has been significant activity and valuable discussions during the meetings that have been held in addition to many of the recommendations that they have offered to FMCSA.
STC staff has been a party to these meetings, contributing to the conversations and helping to shape recommendations as active committee members. It is clear the committee members take their responsibilities seriously and provide thoughtful and constructive input to FMCSA. What is not clear is what the Agency has done with the reports and recommendations provided by the MCSAC. Given the time and resources that have been dedicated to MCSAC over the years, we would recommend a clearer accounting of all the MCSAC recommendations to FMCSA.
One model to consider is that deployed by the National Transportation Safety Board. Based on its crash investigations, the NTSB provides recommendations to various stakeholders in transportation, documents and publishes the responses and whether they deem them to be acceptable or not. In our view, FMCSA should hold itself accountable to the MCSAC for its recommendations and publish its disposition for public view. In our view, this is a Strategic MISS by FMCSA. The Agency has a large hill to climb to reduce crashes and fatalities in large truck and bus crashes, and the members of the MCSAC have spent valuable volunteer time trying to help them get there.