Assessing the Benefits of Alternative Compliance

Both the U.S. Department of Transportation and the trucking industry have invested in the development and testing of innovative research, technologies and initiatives to reduce truck-involved fatalities. This research has included critical cost-benefit analyses providing documented and replicable evidence that certain non-traditional safety approaches can reduce truck-involved crashes, injuries and fatalities. These “alternative” efforts – strategies that are typically voluntary relative to traditional activities – have given rise to an innovative concept known as “alternative compliance.” The goal of alternative compliance is to improve upon, or in some instances supplant, certain traditional safety management and compliance practices. The alternative compliance concept derives from empirical data generated by analytical, objective research and “safe” carrier best practices. The ultimate objective of alternative compliance is to develop, evaluate and promote new safety strategies to appropriate carriers using discrete incentives or inducements. This study analyzes a number of potential alternative compliance activities and evaluates them in relation to existing traditional compliance activities and measures. A table is provided which lists several existing traditional compliance activities that are analyzed in this study which correspond to potential alternative compliance activities. The results of a needs assessment study conducted to determine the resources that may be necessary for managing and enforcing new compliance activities are also included in this report.