CSA Score: Check Your FMCSA SMS Score & Fix It

What Is a CSA Score?

A CSA score is a percentile rank FMCSA assigns to your USDOT number in each of seven safety categories, built from 24 months of roadside inspection, violation, and crash data. Percentiles run 0 to 100 and higher is worse. A 75 in Unsafe Driving means roughly 75 percent of carriers with a similar inspection volume have a cleaner record than you do.

The naming is what trips people up. CSA stands for Compliance, Safety, Accountability, and it is the FMCSA enforcement program. The Safety Measurement System, or SMS, is the scoring engine inside that program. So when a fleet owner asks what is my CSA score, the honest answer is that you have seven of them. There is no single composite number, and anyone quoting you one is quoting something FMCSA does not publish.

The score is not a rule you comply with. It is the queue FMCSA uses to decide who gets a warning letter, who gets an off-site investigation, and who gets an auditor in the office. Every point in it traces back to a specific part of the FMCSRs, and that is the only place a score actually gets fixed.

How CSA Scores Are Calculated

SMS does not average anything. It builds a measure for each BASIC, then ranks that measure against a peer group. Five inputs drive the math, and understanding them tells you which violations are worth fighting and which are already fading.

• Severity weight. Every violation carries a weight reflecting its crash risk. An out-of-service violation adds additional weight on top. FMCSA sets those weights in the published SMS Methodology, so the values that apply are the ones in the edition in force when the inspection is scored.
• Time weight. Recent violations hurt more. Violations in the last six months are weighted heaviest, six to twelve months less, and twelve to twenty-four months least.
• 24-month lookback. Anything older than 24 months drops out of the calculation entirely. Nothing is expunged early, and nothing is forgiven for good behavior.
• Normalization. The weighted total is divided by exposure, which varies by BASIC. Driver-based BASICs normalize on relevant inspections. Vehicle Maintenance normalizes on inspections. Crash Indicator normalizes on average power units and mileage from your MCS-150.
• Safety event groups. You are ranked only against carriers with a similar volume of relevant inspections or crashes. This is why a small fleet with three inspections and one violation can post a percentile that looks alarming.

A BASIC only gets a percentile once you meet the minimum data threshold for that BASIC. Below it, you have violations on record but no rank. FMCSA sets that minimum separately for each BASIC in the SMS Methodology, and the count in force at the monthly run decides whether you get a percentile.

There is no official CSA score calculator. FMCSA publishes the methodology, not a public estimator, and any third-party calculator is modeling the peer-group step it cannot see. The lookup above pulls your actual data instead of estimating it.

The Seven BASICs and What Feeds Each One

BASIC stands for Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category. Each one is a separate score with its own violation set and its own fix.

• Unsafe Driving. Speeding, improper lane change, reckless driving, seat belt, texting. Cited under 49 CFR Part 392. Driven by driver behavior, which is why MVR monitoring is the lever here.
• Crash Indicator. DOT-recordable crashes from your accident register under 49 CFR 390.15, weighted by severity and tow-away status. Not publicly displayed.
• Hours-of-Service Compliance. Form and manner, false logs, driving beyond limits, ELD violations under 49 CFR Part 395.
• Vehicle Maintenance. Brakes, lights, tires, defects noted on DVIRs, missing annual inspection. 49 CFR Part 396. This is the highest-volume BASIC for most fleets.
• Controlled Substances and Alcohol. Driving under the influence, and program failures found at roadside or in an investigation. 49 CFR Part 382 and 49 CFR Part 40.
• Hazardous Materials Compliance. Leaking containers, placarding, shipping papers. 49 CFR Parts 171 through 180 and 49 CFR Part 397. Not publicly displayed.
• Driver Fitness. Unqualified or improperly licensed drivers, missing medical certificates, incomplete driver qualification files under 49 CFR Part 391.

Two BASICs matter disproportionately in a paid-freight context. Vehicle Maintenance and Unsafe Driving generate the most roadside data, so they move fastest in both directions.

CSA Intervention Thresholds by Carrier Type

A percentile only means something relative to the intervention threshold for your BASIC and carrier type. Cross it and you enter the FMCSA intervention queue. Passenger carriers are held to the tightest thresholds; hazmat carriers sit in between.

There is no such thing as a good CSA score in the sense people mean. The only target that matters is below threshold in all seven, with margin. A 62 in Unsafe Driving is not comfortable when the threshold is 65 and one speeding ticket in a small event group can move you several points.

How to Check Your CSA Score for Free

This is the single most searched question in this topic, and the answer has two halves: what anyone can see, and what only you can see. Both are free. Neither requires a vendor.

SMS data refreshes on a monthly cycle, so a violation you fix today shows up in the next update, not tomorrow.

Driver CSA Score vs Carrier CSA Score

Drivers do not have CSA scores. This is the most common misunderstanding in the topic, and it costs carriers hires and drivers jobs. SMS scores motor carriers, by USDOT number. There is no percentile attached to a CDL.

What a driver does have is a record. Roadside inspections and crashes attach to the driver as well as to the carrier, and that data is retrievable through the Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP), authorized by Congress in 2005 and administered by FMCSA. PSP returns five years of crash data and three years of inspection data for an individual driver. It shows no percentile and no rank.

So how do you check a driver CSA score? You pull the driver's PSP report with written consent, and you pull the current MVR. Together they tell you what that driver will do to your Unsafe Driving and Crash Indicator numbers before you put them in a truck. We run continuous MVR monitoring for exactly this reason: an annual review catches a violation up to twelve months late, and by then it is already weighted into your score.

What Is a CSA Number? (There Isn't One)

There is no CSA number. Nothing in the FMCSRs creates one, FMCSA does not issue one, and no auditor will ask for one. People searching for a CSA number are almost always looking for their USDOT number, because that is the identifier CSA scores are attached to.

Here is what actually exists and what each one does.

If you have a USDOT number and cannot find it, look it up by legal name in FMCSA's public carrier search, or check your last MCS-150 confirmation. If your number is inactive because the biennial update lapsed, your SMS record still exists and still counts against you. Reactivating starts with the MCS-150 filing.

CSA Score vs Safety Rating

These are two different things and most pages on this topic blur them. A CSA safety rating is not a thing. You have SMS percentiles, and separately you may have a safety fitness rating. They come from different processes and carry different legal weight.

Most carriers are unrated. That is normal and not a mark against you. It means FMCSA has never conducted a rating investigation on your USDOT number.

The connection between the two runs one direction. Over-threshold BASICs make an investigation more likely, and the investigation produces the rating. An Unsatisfactory rating carries an operations prohibition after the statutory period under 49 CFR 385.13. The prohibition takes effect on the 61st day after the date of the FMCSA notice for most carriers, and on the 46th day for carriers hauling passengers or placardable quantities of hazardous materials. A Conditional rating will not shut you down, but shippers, brokers, and insurers read it, and many contracts treat it as a disqualifier.

If you disagree with a rating, the paths are administrative review and a request for a rating change under 49 CFR 385.15 and 49 CFR 385.17. Those are separate from challenging the underlying data, which goes through DataQs.

CSA Points: How They Accrue and How Long They Stay

Fleets talk about CSA points, and the term is close enough to be useful even though FMCSA does not use it. What you are accruing is severity-weighted, time-weighted violation weight inside a specific BASIC. A violation does not add to a general pool. It adds only to its own category.

• They stay 24 months. A violation enters the calculation on the inspection date and drops out entirely 24 months later. There is no early removal for clean driving, no expungement, and no points-reduction course.
• They lose weight as they age. The heaviest weighting applies to the most recent six months, then steps down twice before the violation ages out. A twenty-month-old speeding ticket is carrying a fraction of the weight it did at month one.
• Clean inspections help. Because most BASICs normalize on relevant inspections, a clean inspection increases the denominator and pulls the measure down. This is the only way to improve a score faster than time does.
• Warnings still count. A violation noted on the inspection report counts in SMS even if no citation was issued and no fine was paid. Beating the ticket in court does not by itself remove the SMS violation.
• Out-of-service violations hit hardest. They carry the base severity plus an additional weight, and they show separately in your OOS rate.

To check CSA points, run the lookup above and read the violation detail under each BASIC. Every line shows the inspection date, the violation code, the severity assigned, and the current time weight. That detail is what you dispute, not the percentile.

What Happens When a BASIC Goes Over Threshold

Crossing an intervention threshold does not generate a fine by itself. It puts you in a queue, and the queue escalates. We see the sequence play out the same way across our client base.

• Warning letter. The first contact. It names the deficient BASIC and expects you to act. Ignoring it is what moves you to the next step.
• Targeted roadside inspections. Your inspection selection profile changes, so your trucks get pulled more often. More inspections on a deficient BASIC usually means more violations before it means fewer.
• Off-site investigation. A document request. DQ files, drug and alcohol program records, logs, maintenance files, accident register. You produce them on a deadline.
• On-site focused or comprehensive investigation. An investigator in your office reviewing the same records, plus interviews. A comprehensive review can produce a safety fitness rating under 49 CFR Part 385.
• Civil penalties and operations orders. Violations found in an investigation are assessed under 49 CFR Part 386 and 49 U.S.C. 521(b). Amounts adjust annually for inflation, so the figure that applies is the one in force on the date of the violation.

The most common findings we see in off-site investigations are incomplete driver qualification files under 49 CFR 391.51, missing annual MVR reviews under 49 CFR 391.25, and missing Clearinghouse queries under 49 CFR 382.701. All three are paperwork failures, and all three are avoidable.

How to Improve Your CSA Score

There are exactly three levers: remove bad data that should not be there, stop generating new violations, and add clean inspections. Nothing else moves the number.

• Challenge wrong data through DataQs. If a violation was recorded against the wrong carrier, the wrong driver, or the wrong code, file a Request for Data Review at the FMCSA DataQs system. Attach the inspection report and your documentation. Adjudicated results, such as a dismissed citation, can be submitted for review. Successful challenges remove the violation from your measure.
• Fix Vehicle Maintenance at the pre-trip. Enforce the DVIR process under 49 CFR 396.11 and keep annual inspections current under 49 CFR 396.17. Lights, brakes, and tires account for the bulk of the violations we see in this BASIC.
• Monitor MVRs continuously, not annually. Unsafe Driving is a driver problem. Continuous MVR monitoring surfaces a conviction in days instead of at the next annual review under 49 CFR 391.25.
• Close the Part 382 gaps. Random selections at the FMCSA minimum annual rates under 49 CFR 382.305, which for calendar year 2026 are 50 percent of average driver positions for controlled substances and 10 percent for alcohol, pre-employment testing under 49 CFR 382.301, and full and limited Clearinghouse queries under 49 CFR 382.701.
• Rebuild the DQ files. Driver Fitness violations are almost always a missing document: an expired medical certificate, no annual review, no inquiry to previous employers under 49 CFR 391.23.
• Keep your MCS-150 accurate. Crash Indicator normalizes on power units and mileage. An understated fleet size on a stale MCS-150 inflates your crash rate.

Expect the timeline to run in months. Data ages on a 24-month clock and SMS refreshes monthly, so the earliest a corrected program shows up in your percentiles is the next update cycle.

What Foley's Audit Risk Monitor Includes

Monitoring a score without fixing what produces it is just watching. Audit Risk Monitor pairs continuous score tracking with the programs that change the inputs. We operate each of these in house.

Programs are configured to your fleet type and BASIC exposure. A carrier over threshold in Vehicle Maintenance and a carrier over threshold in Controlled Substances and Alcohol need different work, and we scope it that way.

Why Carriers Bring Their Score to Foley

We are not a data reseller. Foley operates its own consortium and C/TPA, employs the DER support staff who take the call when a result comes back non-negative, manages MRO review, builds and audits driver qualification files, runs background screening, and monitors MVRs continuously. When your Controlled Substances and Alcohol BASIC is the problem, the same team that reads your score runs the program that fixes it.

That matters at audit. An investigator asking for random selection documentation under 49 CFR 382.305 or previous-employer inquiries under 49 CFR 391.23 is asking for records we already hold and maintain in the required format. We produce them, and we sit with you through the response.

• Threshold alerts by BASIC, not a monthly PDF you file and forget.
• Violation-level detail mapped to the driver, the unit, and the CFR part.
• DataQs guidance when a violation is coded wrong or was adjudicated in your favor.
• Filing support so a lapsed MCS-150, a missing BOC-3, or an unpaid unified carrier licence does not compound a score problem into an authority problem.
• DOT drug test administration and Clearinghouse query management under one program.

New authority and not sure where to start? Get the DOT number filed correctly first. Your SMS record begins the day your first truck is inspected, and a clean start is far cheaper than a cleanup.

Frequently asked questions