The Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program, run by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), is designed to hold motorists, including owner-operators, accountable for their role in road safety. The FMCSA groups carriers with those who have a similar number of safety events and assigns each carrier a percentile rank.
The safety data is held online in the FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS) and is organized into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs), which include categories like unsafe driving, vehicle maintenance, and driver fitness.
What Goes into a CSA Score?
CSA scores are calculated with roadside inspection and crash report data from the Safety Measurement System (SMS) from the last 24 months. The calculations consider factors like crash severity, how long ago the event occurred, and annual vehicle miles travelled. Carriers receive a CSA score for each of the seven BASICs:
- Unsafe Driving: The Unsafe Driving BASIC pertains to the operation of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) by drivers in a dangerous or careless manner. Examples include speeding, reckless driving, improper lane change, and inattention.
- Crash Indicator: the Crash Indicator BASIC considers histories or patterns of high crash involvement, such as frequency and severity. It is based on information from State-reported crashes that meet reportable crash standards (e.g., fatalities, injuries requiring medical attention away from the scene, disabling damage requiring a vehicle to be towed).
- HOS Compliance: The HOS Compliance BASIC includes violations of the regulations pertaining to records of duty status (RODS) and hours-of-service limits. Examples include a driver operating more hours than allowed under HOS regulations and falsification of RODS.
- Vehicle Maintenance: The Vehicle Maintenance BASIC pertains to regulations regarding properly maintaining a CMV and preventing shifting loads, spilled or dropped cargo, and overloading of a CMV. Proper maintenance includes, among other things, ensuring that lamps and reflectors are working, and tires are not worn. Examples include operating an out-of-service vehicle, improper loading/securement, or operating a vehicle with inoperative brakes, lights, and/or other mechanical defects, and failure to make required repairs.
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol: The Controlled Substances/Alcohol BASIC pertains to the operation of CMVs by drivers who are impaired due to alcohol, illegal drugs, and the misuse of prescription or over-the-counter medications. Examples include operating under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
- Hazardous Materials Compliance: The HM Compliance BASIC addresses the requirements in Part 397 of the FMCSRs as well as those in the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMRs). Examples include failing to mark, label, or placard in accordance with the regulations and not properly securing a package containing HM.
- Driver Fitness: The Driver Fitness BASIC concerns the operation of CMVs by drivers who are unfit to operate a CMV due to a lack of training, experience, or medical qualifications. Examples include failure to have a valid and appropriate commercial driver’s license (CDL) and being medically unqualified to operate a CMV.
Why having a good CSA score is important?
CSA scores are calculated on a zero to 100 percentile scale, with 100 indicating the worst performance and zero indicating the best performance. The FMCSA sets intervention thresholds on a per category level, based on the BASIC’s relationship to crash risk.
Carriers with scores greater than 65% in Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, and HOS Compliance are subject to FMCSA investigations. For hazardous materials and passenger carriers, the threshold is even lower, at 60% and 50%, respectively. The remaining BASIC categories have an 80% threshold for most carriers, after which the FMCSA will intervene.
Carriers with good CSA scores will benefit from lower insurance premiums, fewer DOT audits and roadside inspections, and a better reputation with current and potential customers, so staying well below those thresholds can have an outsize impact on your operations and profitability
How your assigned Freight Analytics Associate can help you manage this process better:
- Perform ELD audits to ensure all ELD logs are correctly recorded. This can be achieved by reviewing the Personal Conveyance (PC) use each week and ensure it’s been applied in accordance with company’s ELD policy and that all unassigned miles are reviewed to ensure it gets correctly assigned and that no one truck was driven with its ELD intentionally switched off, when in fact ELD was meant to be used.
- Reduce maintenance violation by proactively keeping track of items noted in DVIR and ensuring these items are addressed timely, by highlighting to management list of open DVIR or items that requires repairs. Keep track of schedule service and ensure dispatch team allocates necessary time slot for maintenance.
- Review and maintain DQ files by ensuring each driver record is up to date, which includes drivers CDL A status and medical card. Ensure that all violation committed are correctly recorded in his or her file to help facilitate the yearly performance appraisal review.
- Review Fleet Telematics Data and report incidence of unsafe driving event and assist management in ranking drivers’ performance by applying indicators such as unsafe braking and driving speed based on data provided by the telematics system.
