What is a good CSA Score?
A good CSA score is having no CSA score in each CSA BASIC category. In fact, a CSA score of 0 in each of the seven Behavior Analysis Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) would be considered a perfect CSA score.
If you have a 0 in a CSA BASIC category, that means that you either haven’t had a roadside inspection or that any roadside inspections that you had resulted in no violations being found. Short of this perfect goal, try to keep each BASIC score as close to 0 as possible.
I’ve always said that no inspection is the best inspection (from a DOT compliance standpoint). If your commercial vehicles aren’t being inspected, then your drivers are generally not giving law enforcement a reason to inspect them.
Each of the BASIC categories in the CSA program ( Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, Hours of Service, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances & Alcohol, Hazardous Materials and Driver Fitness) have a percentile range of 0 to 100%.
If you’re a motor carrier with a 100% percentile score in a BASIC area, this means that every other trucking company in your “Safety Event Group” (the FMCSA’s questionable attempt to group carriers based due to a similar number of inspections) has a better CSA score than you do in that CSA category.
So, the closer that your CSA scores are to 0, the better.
Why is Having a Good CSA Score Important?
Having a good CSA score is critical to the health of your trucking company.
Good CSA scores lead to:
Less regulatory oversight by the FMCSA
Lower insurance premiums
Relationships with more freight brokers and shippers
Opportunities to secure better freight
Higher freight prices
Reduced chances of nuclear verdicts from lawsuits
The FMCSA and your CSA Scores
The whole point of this CSA exercise is to reduce crashes on US roads by ensuring your trucking or bus company’s compliance with the DOT regulations. Simply put, if you have lower CSA scores, the FMCSA won’t really bother you.
When your CSA scores hit the preset ” Intervention Thresholds” in each BASIC category, your problems take off. (More on that in a moment).
Truck Insurance and your CSA Scores
Similarly, truck insurance companies feel that a fleet with high CSA scores present a higher crash risk than those that have what they consider to be good CSA scores.
Though this is certainly a subject of debate, it’s safe to say that trucking companies who have solid fleet management, safety and compliance systems and processes in place generally have lower CSA scores and likely make for better insureds than those that don’t.
Two CSA BASIC categories (Unsafe Driving and the Crash Indicator BASICS) have a proven relationship with crash risk. In other words, if you have high CSA BASIC scores in either of these two areas, you’re likely to be involved in a future crash.
A strong relationship between your chances of being in a future crash haven’t been successfully tied to any of the others categories yet.
Regardless, most truck insurance companies regard a motor carrier as being “higher risk” if they have 2 or more CSA BASIC Alerts (over the pre-set FMCSA Intervention Threshold in that safety category.)
Freight Brokers and your CSA Scores
Freight brokers and shippers can’t afford to do business with trucking companies that have high CSA scores or a Conditional Safety Rating because there is a good chance that they could be sued just for working with you if one of your drivers is involved in a bad crash.
So, they invest in systems and processes to make sure that the motor carriers that they do business with have what they consider to be good CSA scores.
Generally, the better your CSA scores are, you have the opportunity (if you want to call it that) to work with better freight brokers and shippers. This should allow you to secure better and more profitable loads for your fleet.
Plaintiff Attorneys and your CSA Scores
Plaintiff attorneys are a crafty and intelligent bunch of people. They have figured out very good ways to convince juries that your trucking operation is dangerous to the general public and they love to use your CSA scores as proof of this.
All attorneys will try use your DOT compliance history against you. The best ones will paint a very unflattering picture of your company in hopes of securing an outsized verdict against you.
What is a Bad CSA Score?
Ok, we’ve discussed what makes a good CSA score and you may be wondering what a bad CSA score looks like.
Well, this one really depends on who you ask. (see my discussion of the different impacts above).
While there is no universal definition of what a good CSA scores look like, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) does define what bad CSA scores are.
Each BASIC category has predetermined “Intervention Thresholds”. Once your CSA scores hit the threshold number in a category, you now have a CSA BASIC “alert” for that category. They call it an “intervention threshold” because once you have an alert, they start becoming very concerned about your safety and compliance practices.
For example, say that your CSA BASIC score is currently 75% in the Hazardous Materials Compliance BASIC. With this CSA score, the FMCSA likely won’t care that you exist.
But, have another HazMat inspection with a violation and hit the magic 80% alert threshold and expect a nice note to be mailed out to you (that’s your first “intervention”).
Here are the general “Intervention Thresholds” for each CSA BASIC (Passenger carriers and HazMat transporters are held to a higher standard):
65% Unsafe Driving
65% Crash Indicator
65% Hours of Service
80% Vehicle Maintenance
80% Controlled Substances & Alcohol
80% Hazardous Materials
80% Driver Fitness
Usually, you’ll be okay with an alert in one CSA BASIC category.
But, if you have a CSA BASIC score above 90% for more than 2 months in a row in 2 BASIC categories or more, you’ll be deemed a “High Risk Carrier” by the FMCSA.
When this happens, make sure that your driver qualification files and all of your other compliance documents are in order because a friendly investigator from the FMCSA or your State DOT will be paying you a visit soon. (Check out this article to help prepare for a DOT Compliance Review)
How do I check My FMCSA CSA Scores?
1) Go to https://secure.login.gov/
2) Sign up for or login into your FMCSA portal (these are the same credentials that you use to access your Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse or the DOT Pre Employment Screening Program (PSP).
2) Type in your DOT number in the box
3) Enter your DOT PIN (If you’ve lost it, click here to find your DOT PIN in 5 minutes)
4)) Hit the Search button
(This is a new process as of December 2023)
How To Improve Your CSA Scores
Only 3 things will help improve your CSA scores:
1) Time passing
2) Not receiving any new violations from roadside inspections
3) Submitting a DataQ request to the FMCSA to try to have incorrect violations fixed or having prior crashes be considered as “Not Preventable” under the Crash Preventability Determination Program ( CPDP) review process.
Time Passing
Like a nice whisky, your CSA scores will naturally get better with age (assuming that you can avoid getting points from new roadside inspections).
Knowing how the passing of time impacts how to calculate a CSA score is important, so here’s a brief rundown to help:
The design of the CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS) causes each violation that is received to count against your trucking company less as time passes. Specifically, each violation will count less once it is 6 months old, 12 months old and then 24 months old.
For example, say that your driver receives a violation for improper load securement (393.1 violation). That violation has a CSA “severity weight” rating of 7 points.
When that violation first hits your vehicle maintenance CSA scores, that will cost you 21 CSA points (7 “Severity” points x 3 “time” points).
Once you get past the 6 month mark, that same violation will only count as 14 points as the time weight changes from 3 points to 2 points when you hit that mark.
If you want to dig deeper about how to calculate CSA points, check out our CSA Violation Points Guide here! There are even some nice CSA score charts there too.
Avoiding New Roadside Inspections
Preventing new violations is the best and fastest way to improve your CSA scores going forward!
Going back a little bit to what I said before, no inspection is the best inspection. Law enforcement targets the “low hanging fruit” when it comes to enforcement of most DOT regulations. If your drivers or trucks aren’t being inspected then they are probably not causing the cops to notice them.
This generally means that they’re probably:
- Not speeding
- Not making improper lane changes
- Not driving in the improper lane
- Not following too closely
- Not disobeying stop signs and red lights
- Not using their cell phones while driving
- That all of their required lights and reflective sheeting are operational
- That they’re wearing their seatbelt
About 85% of all roadside inspection violations stem from a driver either being stopped for speeding or for having a required light out.
So, focus most of your safety and compliance efforts into preventing just those two violations and you can avoid most problems with your CSA scores.
Don’t believe me? Go and check your roadside inspection history on the Safety Measurement System website. We’ll wait right here for you.
I’m willing to bet good money that your driver received one of these two violations during most of your prior roadside inspections with a violation.
Using the FMCSA DataQ Process
Many of our trucking clients and others believe that DataQ appeals are some sort of magic bullet for reducing your CSA scores. Unfortunately, they’re not.
In my experience, a DataQ request to change or remove a violation is only successful about 35% of the time. The FMCSA cites a bit higher number (somewhere between 45 to 55%) but they count requests for simple things like a violation being assigned to the wrong carrier or simply having the driver’s info corrected, etc.
So, I’m happier with my estimate. I won’t get into the weeds on this topic…I’ll save it for a full article by itself one day.
But, just understand that using the DataQ process to improve your CSA scores isn’t a very good strategy to count on.
CSA Scores for Drivers
People often ask ” Do truck drivers have a CSA score?”
Yes and no.
Truck drivers don’t have an actual CSA score like trucking companies do. But, every roadside inspection and crash that a driver has is documented. A truck driver’s roadside inspection and crash history can be viewed by ordering a Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) report from the FMCSA.
A driver can order their own report for free. Or, a trucking company can order one of these reports from the Department of Transportation (DOT) for $10 each (plus an annual enrollment fee). We provide these critical reports as part of our driver onboarding services for all of our My Safety Manager clients.
While the PSP report doesn’t assign a specific CSA BASIC points value to each of the violations received, it provides a very nice inspection and crash history for a driver candidate.
Ordering a PSP report isn’t required by the FMCSA but I really wish that it would be. I feel that these are even more valuable than an MVR in most cases and that all trucking companies should order one for every driver candidate before they hire them.
While a high CSA BAISC score may not be a good indicator of a company being involved in a future crash, there is a proven and strong relationship between a driver receiving a violation in a category where they were previously cited during the last 36 months.
In other words, if a driver has a history of hours of service violations, there is a higher chance that they may have another HOS violation in the future.
Final Thoughts
Having good CSA scores is critical to your success in the trucking industry.
While it’s really hard to come up with a universal definition of what “good” is, shoot for a score of 0 in each CSA BASIC category. Like so many other things in trucking, perfection is a noble goal but usually always out of reach. As long as you haven’t hit the Alert threshold in a category, you’re in decent shape. But, the lower your numbers the better.
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