Understanding Compliance, Safety and Accountability (CSA)

CSA stands for Compliance, Safety and Accountability. It is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) safety compliance and enforcement program that holds motor carriers and drivers accountable for their role in safety, compliance and accountability.

CSA affects motor carriers by identifying drivers with safety problems, prioritizing them for interventions such as warnings and investigations. A drivers safety performance and compliance impact their safety records and will also impact their carrier’s safety record.

FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS)

Your company’s safety data appears online in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS). The FMCSA updates the SMS once a month with data from safety inspections, driver and vehicle violations and crash reports from the last two years, along with investigation results.

The SMS covers:

• The number of safety violations and inspections
• The severity of safety violations or crashes
• When the safety violations occurred, with recent events weighted more heavily
• The number of trucks/buses a carrier operates and the number of vehicle miles traveled
• Acute and Critical Violations found during investigations

Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs)

The FMCSA organizes the SMS data into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) that determine your CSA score (see below):

1. Unsafe Driving – Speeding, reckless driving, improper lane change, inattention, no seatbelts
2. Crash Indicator – Histories of crash involvement (Not Public)
3. Hours-of-Service Compliance – Noncompliance with HOS regulations, including logbooks
4. Vehicle Maintenance – Brakes, lights, defects, failure to make required repairs
5. Controlled Substance/Alcohol – Use/possession of controlled substances/alcohol
6. Hazardous Materials Compliance – Leaking containers, improper packaging and/or placarding (Not Public)
7. Driver Fitness – Invalid license, medically unfit to operate a CMV

The SMS groups carriers by BASIC with other carriers that have a similar number of safety events (crashes, inspections, or violations, etc.) and then ranks carriers and assigns a percentile from 0 to 100 (the higher the percentile, the worse the performance) to prioritize them for interventions.

How do I Check My Companies CSA Score?

CSA scores can be checked online at https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/. All you need is the DOT number for your company. Drivers driving under their carrier’s DOT number must check violations under your carrier’s number.

Some violations are a cut and dry point system while others are calculated by the severity or volume of the violation.

Example: A crash that leads to injury or fatality will impact your score more than simply needing a tow or getting a parking violation. After 2 years violations are removed from your record.

How does a CSA score affect your business?

There are a number of ways that your CSA score can positively and negatively affect your business. Here are a few of the main ones:

• Investigation and intervention risk – A poor CSA score puts you at a higher risk for FMCSA intervention and investigations. This can result in an out-of-service order for your company. Investigations are time-intensive and stressful.
• Revenue – Shippers often look at the public data to help choose safe, reliable carriers. Poor CSA scores can prevent a carrier from getting the most profitable loads, even though some of the CSA BASIC data is private shippers can still look at some of the information provided.
• Insurance – Insurance companies use BASIC scores in their evaluation of a carrier’s risk profile. Higher CSA scores can often lead to higher premiums and deductibles.

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