Every carrier with a Department of Transportation (DOT) number receives an ongoing and updated safety score as part of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program. These safety scores indicate the success of that carrier, impacting the way drivers, inspectors, shippers, receivers, brokers, and more, interact with them.
This article serves as a guide to what CSA scores are, how they are measured, why they matter, and ways to lower them. CSA scores are of utmost importance to carriers, and as we'll see, they should be treated like a team sport, where everyone associated with a particular carrier - whether driver or employee - must play a central role in achieving an optimal score to not only win the game, but the entire championship.
What Is a CSA Score?
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) manages the CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) program, all under the DOT umbrella. The intent of the program is to improve safety on the roads through preventing accidents. It's also a way to identify carriers with higher risks for accidents by holding them accountable for their own actions.
The CSA program focuses on data using a three-prong approach:
- Measure. It starts with the Safety Measurement System (SMS). This involves the data evaluations from inspections, investigations, and accident reports.
- Intervene. Then, when needed, there are Interventions. This involves formal processes to highlight and monitor carriers that have poor scores with the intent to help the carriers improve.
- Evaluate. Finally, there is the Safety and Fitness Determination (SFD) rating system. Not all carriers end up with a SFD score and no rating in this area generally is not a problem.
The focus of this article is on the first part - the SMS (Safety Measurement System) - where a carrier and driver's actions have the most direct impact. Just like in golf, the lower the CSA score, the better. And when a carrier has a low CSA score, there is much less of a need to be concerned about the intervention and evaluation parts. However, if a carrier needs improvement with its SMS, those two parts are critical in minimizing the safety risk that fleet - all of its drivers - poses to everyone on the road.
How are CSA Scores Measured?
The SMS (Safety Measurement System) uses data from inspections, investigations, and accident reports to measure seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs):
- Unsafe Driving: Actions while driving such as speeding, texting, not wearing a seatbelt, improper lane changes, etc.
- Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance: Failing to adhere to drive-time mandates and/or proper logging of that time.
- Driver Fitness: How fit a driver is (CDL, medical certificates, driving records, etc)
- Vehicle Maintenance: The condition of your equipment through parts such as tires, brakes, lights, cargo securement, and other, as evaluated through pre- and post-trip inspections, vehicle defects, and repairs.
- Crash Indicator: Frequency and severity of crashes (defined as when a fatality or injury occurs, or when the vehicle requires transportation from the scene).
- Controlled Substances / Alcohol: Driving under the influence of alcohol (including having alcoholic beverages in the cab) or illegal drugs (and includes the abuse of prescription or over-the-counter medications).
- Hazardous Material Compliance: The handling of a hazmat load (packaging, marking, attendance, etc).
Each month, the SMS compiles data safety incidents, inspections and investigations that occurred over the past two years. The data from all BASIC categories gets matched up to each carrier's DOT number, ultimately assigning points based on the violation and severity.
These points then factor into a unique safety rating - somewhere on a percentile scale between 0-100 - which gets ranked both against the carrier's individual actions as well as against the carrier's peers (other carriers of similar truck and driver size). As mentioned, the lower the score - the closer to 0 - the better. Each time a violation is issued, it negatively affects that carrier’s score by adding points to it. Even if you just get a warning, rather than an actual ticket, you still receive the same amount of CSA points.
Each individual violation is scored between 1-10, depending on the severity of the violation. For instance, an Unsafe Driving speeding violation of 15 miles over the limit impacts the score at a higher rate (10 points) than one for 11-14 miles over the limit (7 points). Or, an HOS Compliance violation for falsification of or inaccurate information on your record duty of status impacts it higher (7 points) than a violation for failing to assume or decline unassigned driving time (5 points).
But, it doesn't stop there, because any violation is also weighed based on the timeframe of when it occurred (the more recent, the higher the points). Specifically, violations that happened within:
- 0-6 months get multiplied by three
- 6-12 months get multiplied by two
- 12-24 months get counted only once
When a carrier's rating in a BASIC area is above the CSA threshold, then the carrier is subject to additional scrutiny, and possibly, intervention. If a carrier's rating is above the threshold in more than one BASIC area, then the additional scrutiny and intervention is magnified.
While some carriers may have differences on how the SMS program was designed and is administered, what is clear is carriers with BASIC scores above the threshold have more accidents than carriers with BASIC scores below the threshold.
DataQs is a system that allows you to challenge a violation if you feel it is unwarranted or unjustified. It should be noted that it is not easy to successfully challenge a violation. When it does happen, it's often because there is physical evidence such as a dashcam. It should also be noted that the ability to challenge a violation only applies to citations. You cannot challenge a warning (meaning that warnings always count toward your CSA score).
Why Do CSA Scores Matter?
A carrier's ratings for all BASIC categories above are available to the public with the exception of the Crash Indicator and Hazardous Material Compliance categories.
CSA scores matter greatly. Here are a few of the main reasons why it is in your best interest to do everything possible to keep them low:
- Fewer inspections. High scores indicate a carrier is at greater risk for being involved in accidents, which lead to more inspections. This can be a slippery slope, resulting in additional violations, including a higher score and possibly even an out-of-service order, interventions, and more. With a low score, you are not subject to the same level of scrutiny.
- Better business opportunities. Many shippers and customers use CSA scores to evaluate carriers.“If you have a bad score, there are a lot of shippers and other customers won't work with you,” Charles, DOT Compliance and Safety Manager, explains. The criteria by which they will or will not do business with a carrier varies, but each has their own threshold, and oftentimes, when a score hits that threshold, they pass. Having a low CSA score will enable you to attract more opportunities and often at higher rates.
- Lower insurance costs. Financially, good CSA scores can help carriers get better insurance rates. The lower scores indicate lower risks of accidents and that translates into lower rates.
- Attract good talent to the fleet. Quality drivers, who understand how CSA scores impact their ability to keep moving and make money, are also attracted to carriers with good scores.
Why are CSA Scores Like a Team Sport?
While individual drivers do not receive individual CSA scores, every single action of the driver has the potential to impact the carrier's CSA score. This is just the same as in sports, where each player and their actions - no matter how small - is critical to the success of the entire team. A seatbelt violation may not seem like that big of a deal, but in fact, it can quickly result in 21 points being added to the Unsafe Driver category in no time. Although CSA scores are calculated monthly, the everyday decisions that individual driver makes - both on and off the road, significantly matters.
CSA scores are closely related with Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) scores. This is the driver's individual rating, which the FMCSA maintains, and provides “electronic access to a commercial driver's five-year crash and three-year inspection history from the FMCSA Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS).” Essentially, the inspections that count against (or for) the carrier also count against (or for) the driver’s PSP data.
A driver can request a copy of his/her PSP score for a nominal fee. A carrier can get access to the individual score if the driver grants permission by signing a release, especially as part of the pre-employment process. Carriers that are focused on safety, such as TrueNorth, check a driver's PSP as part of the hiring process, and evaluate the driver's individual score against a certain threshold.
Heath, Operations Manager at TrueNorth, tells us,
“Drivers often don't realize that their cumulative CSA points that come from accidents and violations remain on their record for 3 years and the carrier's record for 2 years, even when that person leaves the fleet.”
These points will have a direct impact on which companies will hire/contract them as well as which companies will continue to do business with that fleet.
A carrier's CSA score is indicative of its fleet management and safety policies - yes. But it requires the buy-in, effort, and follow-through from every driver leased onto it for it to work. It's a full-contact sport. Your actions - whether you're a driver or fleet manager - matter in keeping yourself and everyone else safe.
How Can You Improve Your CSA Score and Win?
There are two ways to improve your CSA score by lowering it - minimizing violations and when peers’ scores increase.
First, minimizing violations. Having more good, clean inspections with no violations will drive the percentage of bad ones down. There are many things a fleet and a driver can do to work toward this. Fleets can implement a solid road safety plan, compliance training, and regular maintenance requirements. Drivers have the choice to always ensure compliance with the rules and regulations of the seven BASIC categories. For example, completing the pre- and post-trip inspections are critical in identifying and fixing issues before an inspector does. For details on ways to prepare for inspections, check out our article on CVSA Inspections.
Many carriers reward clean inspections through financial incentives. At TrueNorth for example, any time a driver gets a clean inspection (no violations found), they receive a bonus. Depending on the inspection the driver receives, the bonus is $500 for a clean Level I, $250 for Level II, and $100 for Level III.
Second, because a carrier's CSA score is a comparison with the scores of its peers (fleets of similar size), if other carriers do worse comparatively, then yours can improve automatically due to the movement of others.
Finding and retaining your A-team cannot happen overnight. It takes a concerted effort - similar to training and coaching - to get there. If we all work together and try, we can not only win individual games, but we can make the playoffs and dominate the championships.
Put us in, coach!
Other relevant articles:
DVIR: Pre-Trip and Post-Trip Inspections