Motor-carrier safety is a critical and challenging issue in the US motor-carrier industry. Despite the vast safety improvements in the industry, a continuing challenge is the economic costs associated with regulatory oversight of safety inspection programs. The purpose of this article is to compute the costs and associated benefits of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's driver and vehicle inspection program of commercial motor vehicles in the 10,001- to 26,000-lb category. Our analysis reveals that for every dollar spent in program costs, the benefits are $8.86.

SafeStat (Safety Status Measurement System) is an automated analysis system developed for FHWA’s Office of Motor Carriers (OMC) that combines current and historical safety data to measure the relative safety fitness of interstate motor carriers. SafeStat enables OMC to quantify and monitor the safety status of motor carriers and guides the deployment of resources to focus on carriers posing the greatest safety risk. SafeStat resulted from research performed by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center for OMC to improve motor carrier safety fitness assessment and prescribe actions for correcting safety deficiencies. SafeStat initially was developed and implemented as part of a federalstate pilot program. It has been implemented nationally by OMC to identify and rank individual motor carriers for on-site safety compliance reviews. An effectiveness study was devised to confirm that SafeStat-identified carriers were high-safety-risk carriers. Postidentification carrier crash experience was examined and SafeStat’s effectiveness was tested by comparing the crash rates of identified and nonidentified carriers. The effectiveness study shows that SafeStat identifies carriers likely to have significantly higher crash rates than carriers not identified. Specifically, the carriers designated in the highest “at risk” category by SafeStat had a much higher crash rate (169% percent higher) following their identification than carriers not identified as safety risks. In addition to confirming SafeStat’s effectiveness, the results of the study enable SafeStat developers and OMC to assess the relative strengths of SafeStat’s components and to continue enhancing its efficiency.