9 Changes to FMCSA’s CSA Scoring: What you need to know

By Jaden Tareta

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is revamping its Compliance, Safety and Accountability system to consolidate violations, simplify severity weights, update intervention thresholds — and more. At this time, carriers should still use the SMS Website to review safety performance.

Ultimately, this new rule will reduce the impact of a single bad inspection on a motor carrier (MC) and standardize the severity of violations to level the playing field for all motor carriers.

The FMCSA is currently in Phase II and accepting public comments for review. During this phase, motor carriers can log into the CSA Prioritization Preview site with their DOT number to get a glimpse of what their ratings will look like under the new rule and offer comments. Please note that these changes are still under review and have not been implemented yet.

Here’s a summary of the top CSA changes with the new rule:

1.      Reorganized BASICs

BASICs are now “compliance categories” and focus on motor carriers with higher crash rates and potentially unsafe behaviors caused by hazardous driving, drug and alcohol violations, and a lack of truck maintenance. In addition, out-of-service violations will always be considered unsafe driving violations, regardless of the initial violation.

Vehicle maintenance encompasses both Vehicle Maintenance Driver Observed, or items that can be reasonably observed in a walk-around (level 2) inspection, and Vehicle Maintenance, which contains all other maintenance violations, commonly identified during a routine inspection or full roadside (level 1) inspection.

Why it’s important: This change helps motor carriers and law enforcement more accurately pinpoint unsafe driver behavior and drug and alcohol violations as well as pinpoint the source of vehicle maintenance issues.

2.      Reorganized Roadside Violations

As many as 2,000 violation codes have been reduced to 100 groups of safety behaviors. This prevents inconsistencies with multiple violations. Citations can be written for each violation, but because similar violations are now grouped, breach sets can be treated as one violation.

Why it’s important: Identifying safety issues is more important than how it’s documented. Now, carriers with similar safety issues are held to the same standard. Motor carriers may view DOT officers and respective violations as meticulous or ‘nitpicky’. When counting a set of violations as one violation under the group, drivers and carriers can focus on underlying issues rather than the frustration of multiple violations impacting their prioritization scores.

3.      Simplified Severity Weights

All compliance categories — including crashes and their consequences — are assigned a severity weight of 1 or 2 based on cited violations:

Weight of 2 for:

• OOS violations (except unsafe driving)
• Driver disqualifying violations (only for unsafe driving)

Weight of 1 if neither applies.

Why it’s important: It prioritizes MCs with higher crash rates, clarifying why some violations carry more weight. MCs have voiced their frustrations with severity weight for certain violations being overvalued. For example, seatbelt violations carry a severity weight of 7 but may not correlate to the higher crash rates like speeding.

4.      Improved Intervention Thresholds

Three compliance categories target carriers with the highest crash rates.

Vehicle Maintenance: Both categories (Vehicle Maintenance and Vehicle Maintenance Driver Observed) retain the same threshold as the current SMS Vehicle Maintenance BASIC.

Driver Fitness: Thresholds vary by carrier type:

• General carriers: 80%-90%
• Passenger carriers: 65%-75%
• HM carriers: 75%-85%
• Hazmat carriers: 80%-90%

Why it’s important: Higher thresholds help FMCSA focus on carriers with the highest crash risks.

5.      Proportionate Percentiles

Eliminating non-safety-related percentile changes more accurately reflects monthly MC performance trends since the updated methodology uses the frequency of inspections and crashes to assign an MC percentile.

Why it’s important: The FMCSA can compare carriers’ performance and see how it’s trending monthly.

6.      Greater Focus on Recent Violations

Percentiles are calculated for compliance when a carrier has received a violation within the last 12 months. Breaches older than 12 months will not be assigned a percentile or included based solely on roadside inspection data.

This applies to: Hours of Service, Vehicle Maintenance, Vehicle Maintenance Driver Observed, Hazardous Materials and Driver Fitness.

Why it’s important: The FMCSA can focus on carriers with more timely violations and crash risks. Motor carriers may pigeonhole some inspections/violations as the cause of their scores. Instead of addressing their deficiencies and improving, they view their scores as the result of a few inspections that despairingly impacted their company.

7.      Updated Utilization Factor

The Utilization Factor now applies to MCs with up to 250,000 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per average power unit (PU). This better reflects crash risk and enforcement needs for high-mileage carriers.

Why it’s important: Expanding the Utilization Factor helps target carriers with the highest road exposure for intervention.

8.      New Segmentation

Expanding carrier segmentation by operation and vehicle type across more compliance categories for better comparisons. It previously applied only to Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator BASICs but now also includes:

• HM Carriers: Split into Cargo Tank and Non-Cargo Tank
• Driver Fitness: Split into Straight and Combination Carriers

Why it’s important: This new segmentation guarantees that carriers with similar operations and violation patterns are assessed similarly.

9.      Excluding Not Preventable Crashes

The FMCSA excludes “non-preventable” crashes when calculating SMS results.

Why it’s important: The FMCSA’s SMS methodology aligns with its core safety mission and carrier needs.

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