When it comes to fleet safety, many lives are at stake. More than 5 million trucks and 250 million cars are on the road. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration keeps America's roads safe by reducing crashes, injuries, and deaths involving big trucks and buses. Drivers and carriers must work with them to do this.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) takes its job seriously and uses the CSA program to identify carriers with safety issues and prioritize them for interventions. You must have a solid understanding of your CSA score to maintain an excellent safety track record.

What is the CSA Score?

CSA scores measure a company's performance in terms of customer satisfaction. They are based on several factors, including customer surveys, customer complaints, and other data.

The CSA Score is important because it is one of the few measures of customer satisfaction that is public and objective. It can be used to compare different companies and to see how well a company is doing over time.

The CSA Score is not perfect, but it is an excellent way to get an idea of how satisfied customers are with a company.

What are the CSA Score Categories?

There are three CSA Score categories: Behavioral Analysis, Crash Indicator, and Vehicle Maintenance.

The Behavioral Analysis score includes speeding, hard braking, and rapid acceleration. It looks at your driving habits and how they could potentially lead to a crash.

The Crash Indicator score category is all about how likely you are to be involved in a crash based on your accident history and the severity of any accidents you've been in.

The Vehicle Maintenance score category determines whether you get regular oil changes and tire rotations. It's trying to gauge how well you take care of your vehicle and if it's safe to be on the road.

What Goes into a CSA Score?

The Safety Measurement System (SMS) data from the last 24 months calculates CSA scores. This includes data from roadside inspections and crash reports. The calculations consider how bad the crash was, how long ago it happened, and how many miles the vehicle travels each year. For each of the seven BASICs, carriers get a CSA score:

Unsafe Driving

This one is mostly common sense, and most people would agree that it is unsafe to drive in this way. Things like texting, going too fast, driving while distracted, etc. Anything that takes your eyes off the road or your mind off it.

Crash indicator

This score is based on your carrier's state-reported crash data from the last two years. The goal is to find patterns of high crash rates and figure out what people did that caused the crashes. Accidents are reported if someone dies or gets hurt or if one of the cars involved has to be moved from the scene, no matter what the driver or carrier did to cause the accident.

Hours-of-Service Compliance

HOS, or hours-of-service, compliance is the rules about how long each driver can drive. These change frequently and are a big part of your CSA score, so make sure you and your drivers are up to date on them.

Vehicle Maintenance

From year to year, the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC has more violations than all the other BASICs put together. Over 65% of all tickets given at roadside checks are for this one thing. With a nearly 1 in 5 chance of being taken out of service because of a mechanical problem or improperly secured cargo, a motor carrier would be smart to look at its vehicle maintenance and inspection program, as well as its cargo securement devices and training.

Controlled Substance/Alcohol

This metric is also pretty easy to understand. If a driver uses alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, or even over-the-counter drugs in a way that makes them less able to drive, your score increases. Any alcohol container, whether open or not, is against the law.

Hazardous Materials Compliance

This BASIC talks about the rules for transporting dangerous materials. You can get in trouble if you don't package, label, placard, load, or do a few other things right. This one's information is also not out in the open. People in your organization with the right login credentials can only access the data.

Driver fitness

The driver fitness BASIC is about keeping records for each driver. Your company gets a score based on how current your driver's qualifications, licenses, and driving records are.

How Do I Improve My CSA Score?

Over time, your company's CSA score can decrease if safety is a top priority. Knowing the BASICs and how moving violations and accidents affect the score is important. Now that the ELD mandate is in place, you should also know what it requires to ensure you follow the rules.

If you're not happy with your CSA score, you can do a few things to improve it.

Careful Hiring

Hiring safe drivers is essential because CSA scores are based on data from roadside inspections and accident reports. During the hiring process, you should review all potential new hires' PSP records, including individual driver safety records. When PSP reports are used in the hiring process, organizations see a reduction in their collision and out-of-service driver rates of 8% and 17%, respectively.

Training Programs

The CSA score measures how safe your company is as a whole. You should put money into a safety program with ongoing training and check-ins to improve your CSA score. Accidents happen, but taking steps to reduce your chances of getting into one is essential. One way to do this is to review any challenging driving incidents regularly.

Set Up a Preventative Maintenance Schedule

• Using a reliable ELD and properly using it

• Insist on thorough DVIRs

• Full Driver Qualification Files

• Setting Expectations

• Implement and Enforce the Drug & Alcohol Program

• Monitoring ELD daily for speeding, hard breaks, distracted driving, HOS violations, etc

• Inspire and create a culture of Safety and Compliance.

Thirty percent of all violations at the side of the road are related to lights, and more than eleven percent are for tires. All violations are given a severity weight that reflects the crash risk on a scale from 1 (lowest crash risk) to 10 (highest crash risk) for each BASIC category. For example, violations related to lights usually get two to six points on a scale of ten, so maintenance problems can quickly lead to a high CSA score. To keep your fleet running smoothly and your CSA score low, set up a preventative maintenance program and make sure drivers do pre-date and post-trip inspections.

Understanding your CSA score is essential to stay safe on the roads. A CSA score measures how likely you are to be involved in an accident, and the higher your score, the greater the risk. If you're concerned about your CSA score, there are things you can do to improve it. Take some time to learn about the factors that affect your score, and ensure you're doing everything possible to minimize those risks. It's also a good idea to check your score regularly to keep track of any changes.

See what’s causing CSA score violations.
Vallon Consulting can help you get to the root cause of violations and prioritize where you take action to help improve your CSA scores. Contact us today to see how we can help your driver safety and overall fleet management.

About Vallon Consulting LLC: Vallon Consulting is A Full-Service Trucking Consulting Company that tackles some of the most critical challenges and obstacles in the trucking industry. Our diverse global team is passionate about helping carriers and fleet managers meet their goals and ensure business stability. We do this by providing services, solutions, resources, and education.

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