The Accident Register: What Counts as an Accident, and What You Have to Keep

The definition, which is the whole article

Under 49 CFR 390.5, an accident is an occurrence involving a commercial motor vehicle operating on a highway in interstate or intrastate commerce which results in any one of the following:

• a fatality;
• bodily injury to a person who, as a result of the injury, immediately receives medical treatment away from the scene; or
• one or more motor vehicles incurring disabling damage as a result of the accident, requiring the vehicle or vehicles to be transported away from the scene by a tow truck or other motor vehicle.

The term expressly does not include an occurrence involving only boarding and alighting from a stationary vehicle, or one involving only the loading or unloading of cargo.

Three things follow from that definition, and all three catch carriers out.

Fault is irrelevant

The definition says nothing about who caused it. A car runs a red light, hits your trailer and is towed away: that is a recordable accident on your register, and it appears in your Crash Indicator data. This is the single most common misunderstanding about the whole system.

"Towed away" means disabled, not convenient

The test is disabling damage requiring the vehicle to be transported away. A driveable vehicle towed because the owner preferred it that way is not the same thing as a vehicle that could not leave under its own power. In practice the police report usually settles it, and in practice carriers should record it if there is doubt rather than argue the point with an auditor two years later.

Treatment away from the scene, immediately

Not "was injured". Not "went to a doctor the following week". The person has to receive medical treatment away from the scene, immediately, as a result of the injury. Someone declining treatment at the roadside and attending their own doctor three days later does not meet it.

What the register has to contain

Under 49 CFR 390.15, the register must record, for each accident:

• the date of the accident;
• the city or town, or the nearest one, and the state;
• the driver's name;
• the number of injuries;
• the number of fatalities; and
• whether hazardous materials, other than fuel spilled from the fuel tanks of a vehicle involved in the accident, were released.

That is all. There is no prescribed form. A spreadsheet with those columns satisfies the regulation, and a spreadsheet is what most small carriers should use.

Alongside the register, you must keep copies of all accident reports required by state or other governmental entities or by insurers. The register is the index; the reports are the file behind it.

How long you keep it

Three years from the date of each accident. Note the wording — the clock runs per accident, not per register. An accident from four years ago can come off; one from two years ago cannot, even if the claim closed long ago.

The register with nothing in it

This is where most small carriers go wrong, and it is worth being blunt about.

If you have had no accidents, you still need an accident register. It is an empty one. An auditor asking to see your accident register and being told "we have not had any" gets a different impression from an auditor being handed a document headed "Accident Register" with the correct columns and no rows.

The audit is not testing whether you crashed. It is testing whether you have a system that would have recorded it if you had. That distinction runs through the whole of the new entrant safety audit, and it is why an empty register is a pass and a missing one is a finding.

Cooperating with an investigation

390.15 also imposes a duty beyond record-keeping. Motor carriers must make all records and information pertaining to an accident available to an authorised representative or special agent of FMCSA, or an authorised state or local official, on request, and must give all reasonable assistance in the investigation — including responding fully and accurately to inquiries.

That obligation exists whether or not the accident met the recordable definition.

Where the accident goes afterwards

A recordable accident that is reported to FMCSA lands in your Crash Indicator BASIC. That BASIC is not publicly visible — it requires a login — but brokers, shippers and insurers with access can see it, and it feeds intervention decisions.

FMCSA operates a Crash Preventability Determination Program under which certain crash types can be reviewed and, if found not preventable, flagged as such in the public record and excluded from the Safety Measurement System calculation. The eligible crash types are defined and limited; the programme is not a general appeals process for any crash you believe was not your fault. If a crash on your record fits one of the eligible categories, a Request for Data Review through the DataQs system is how you raise it.

Related reading

• The new entrant safety audit — where the register gets asked for.
• CSA scores and the BASICs — where recordable accidents end up.
• Drug and alcohol testing — post-accident testing has its own, different triggers.