Including our family and friends
I just finished reading the guest article in the current Transport Topics, titled “Ensuring Accurate Safety Records.” The title is as inaccurate as the content, but very subtly so.
The writer, Fred Fakkema, works for Zonar Systems, (“Zonar provides electronic fleet inspection, tracking and operations solutions for public and private fleets.” http://www.zonarsystems.com/company/about.php), so his natural bias in favor of the industry he serves is to be naturally expected. However, that is no excuse to not present a balanced point of view.
His topic is focused on the new changes in the FMCSR’s that allow motor carriers and drivers to “change” their safety record if a violation is issued and later results in a dismissal of the ticket.
On the surface this sounds great: why should a violation remain on the record if it is later dismissed ?
The answer lies in what we expect in terms of “accuracy,” and this gets back to the title of this particular article.
Mr. Fakkema advocates in favor of erasing all tickets from the safety record if they are later dismissed. The problem lies in the fact that many tickets for safety inspection violations can be easily resolved by hiring an attorney to work out a plea bargain, perhaps pay a higher fine for a smaller offense, and the ticket gets dismissed.
So, imagine that a driver gets a dozen safety violation tickets and by hiring an attorney, gets them all dismissed. Should the driver’s publicly available safety record show a dozen safety violations, or none ?
Which approach is more “accurate”?
Mr. Fakkema believes the “clean” record is accurate; I believe otherwise.
I would propose a compromise in the regulations which would keep the violations on the record forever, but include how the ticket was resolved. Was it proven in court with evidence that the driver was innocent, or was it a plea bargain and the unsafe behavior continued again and again, all expunged by more plea bargains ?
IMHO, such a system that reported all the information, without any bias, would be one we all could indeed describe as: “Ensuring Accurate Safety Records.”