Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) is FMCSA's safety compliance and enforcement program for motor carriers. At its center is the Safety Measurement System (SMS), which uses roadside inspection results, crash reports and investigation findings to rank carriers and decide which ones FMCSA should contact first. The goal is to find carriers with safety problems early and intervene before crashes happen.
CSA is not a regulation that carriers sign up for. Every carrier with a USDOT number that is inspected or involved in a reportable crash builds an SMS record, whether it runs one truck or thousands. Shippers, brokers and insurers also look at that data, so CSA results affect business as well as enforcement.
What Is CSA and the Safety Measurement System?
CSA is a program rather than a single section of the CFR. The rules carriers are measured against are the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and Hazardous Materials Regulations. The SMS is FMCSA's tool for ranking carriers on that compliance, and its formulas are published in FMCSA's SMS Methodology. The current version is 3.21, with the methodology revised in May 2026.
The SMS draws on four data sources:
- Roadside inspections: violations recorded by certified inspectors.
- Crash reports: commercial vehicle crashes reported by the states.
- Investigation results: violations found during FMCSA or state investigations, including acute and critical violations from the past 12 months.
- Census data: the carrier's registration information, such as power units and vehicle miles traveled, used to normalize results by size and exposure.
The seven BASICs
Results are grouped into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs):
- Unsafe Driving: dangerous or careless operation, such as speeding or reckless driving.
- Crash Indicator: the carrier's history of crash involvement, based on frequency and severity.
- Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance: driving while ill or fatigued, or violating hours-of-service rules.
- Vehicle Maintenance: failing to maintain vehicles or properly secure cargo.
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol: operating while impaired by alcohol, illegal drugs or misused medications.
- Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance: unsafe handling of hazardous materials.
- Driver Fitness: operating without proper training, licensing or medical qualification.
FMCSA also tracks an Insurance/Other indicator, based only on investigation results, for problems such as operating without required financial responsibility.
Who Is Covered?
Any motor carrier that operates commercial motor vehicles and has inspections, crashes or investigations in FMCSA's systems can appear in the SMS. That includes both property and passenger carriers. Carriers are compared against peers with a similar number of inspections or crashes, so a small fleet is not ranked directly against a national carrier.
Some results are not public. The Crash Indicator, HM Compliance and Insurance/Other results are hidden from public view. Under the FAST Act, SMS percentiles for property carriers are no longer publicly displayed, and those carriers must log in to see their own results.
How SMS Scoring Works
Severity and time weights
Each violation carries a severity weight from 1 to 10 based on its link to crash risk. Out-of-service violations add 2 more points in the HOS, Vehicle Maintenance, HM Compliance and Driver Fitness BASICs, and total severity per inspection per BASIC is capped at 30. Recent events count more. Violations and crashes in the past 6 months get a time weight of 3, those 6 to 12 months old get 2, and those 12 to 24 months old get 1. Anything older than 24 months drops out.
Percentiles
The weighted results are normalized and turned into percentiles from 0 to 100 against carriers in the same safety event group. Higher percentiles mean worse performance. A carrier needs minimum data to receive a percentile. For example, Vehicle Maintenance and Driver Fitness require at least five relevant inspections with violations, and Unsafe Driving requires at least three inspections with unsafe driving violations.
Intervention thresholds
A carrier at or above the threshold in a BASIC is prioritized for intervention:
- Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator and HOS Compliance: 65 percent for general carriers, 60 percent for hazmat carriers and 50 percent for passenger carriers.
- Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances/Alcohol and Driver Fitness: 80 percent general, 75 percent hazmat and 65 percent passenger.
- HM Compliance: 80 percent for all carriers.
An acute or critical violation found in an investigation in the past 12 months also triggers prioritization in that BASIC, regardless of percentile.
Interventions
FMCSA uses interventions to correct problems, such as warning letters, roadside inspections and investigations. SMS percentiles are a prioritization tool, not a safety rating. A carrier's safety rating comes from an investigation, while SMS results decide who gets looked at first.
Data Review, Crash Preventability and Monitoring
Carriers and drivers can challenge inspection or crash data through FMCSA's DataQs system. If a citation tied to a violation is dismissed or the driver is found not guilty, submitting the court result can remove the violation or reduce its weight, for inspections on or after August 23, 2014.
Through the Crash Preventability Determination Program, carriers can submit eligible crashes for review. Crashes found not preventable are excluded from the Crash Indicator. Otherwise, the Crash Indicator does not consider fault.
Carriers should review their SMS data at least monthly and keep their USDOT registration current so mileage and power unit counts are accurate.
Changes Coming to the SMS
In a November 20, 2024 Federal Register notice, FMCSA approved a redesigned SMS. Planned changes include renaming the BASICs "compliance categories," moving controlled substances and alcohol violations into Unsafe Driving, splitting Vehicle Maintenance into two categories, grouping about 959 violations into 116 violation groups and simplifying severity weights to 1 or 2. FMCSA said a later notice would announce the launch date. As of early November 2026, that notice had not been issued and the current seven-BASIC methodology remained in use. Check FMCSA's CSA website for the current status.
Common Compliance Mistakes
- Ignoring the data. Carriers often discover a high percentile only when a warning letter or a customer flags it.
- Not challenging bad data. Inspections assigned to the wrong carrier or violations later dismissed in court stay on the record unless someone files a DataQs request.
- Weak pre-trip inspections. Many roadside vehicle defects, such as lighting and tire problems, are visible during a thorough driver vehicle inspection.
- Out-of-date registration. Understated mileage or power units can make a carrier's measures look worse than they are.
- No driver coaching. Repeat violations by the same few drivers drive up percentiles. Track and address patterns early.
How to Manage Your CSA Results: Step by Step
- Get access. Set up your FMCSA portal login so you can see your full SMS results, including non-public BASICs.
- Review monthly. Check each BASIC, the inspections behind it and how close you are to the threshold.
- Correct bad data. File DataQs requests for wrong or dismissed violations and submit eligible crashes for preventability review.
- Find root causes. Group violations by driver, vehicle and terminal, and use root cause analysis on repeat problems.
- Act on the findings. Assign corrective actions such as maintenance fixes, driver coaching or policy changes, and track them to completion.
- Strengthen inspections. Improve pre-trip and post-trip checks and periodic maintenance to prevent roadside violations.
- Keep registration current. Update your USDOT registration and correct mileage and power unit counts.
- Watch for SMS changes. Review how the planned compliance categories would affect your results.
How SMS360 Helps
SMS360's Fleet Reports help safety managers see the trends behind their CSA results. Teams can report on inspections, violations, accidents and driver records by driver, vehicle or location, then use dashboards to spot repeat problems before they push a BASIC over the threshold.
When a report reveals a pattern, managers can assign and track corrective actions, schedule driver training and keep supporting documents in one place. That makes it easier to show progress to customers, insurers and FMCSA during an investigation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good CSA score?
There is no single CSA score. Each BASIC has its own percentile, and lower is better. What matters most is staying below the intervention threshold for your carrier type, such as 65 percent for Unsafe Driving or 80 percent for Vehicle Maintenance for general property carriers.
How long do violations stay on a CSA record?
Violations and crashes count in the SMS for 24 months. Their weight falls over time: events in the past 6 months count three times, events 6 to 12 months old count twice, and events 12 to 24 months old count once.
Can the public see my CSA scores?
Not all of them. Crash Indicator, HM Compliance and Insurance/Other results are not public, and under the FAST Act percentiles for property carriers are hidden from the public. Carriers can see their own full results by logging in to the FMCSA portal.
Is CSA the same as a DOT safety rating?
No. CSA's Safety Measurement System ranks carriers so FMCSA can decide whom to contact first. A safety rating is a separate determination made after an investigation. The two are related, because high percentiles can lead to an investigation that results in a rating.
