If you’re interested in becoming a truck driver, you’ll quickly learn the importance of Compliance, Safety, and Accountability (CSA) scores. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) uses these scores to track the safety performance of trucking companies. Your personal driving performance can affect your employment opportunities, your inspections, and even your ability to stay on the road. But do truck drivers have a CSA score?
What Is a CSA Score?
Let’s start at the beginning. CSA is the FMCSA’s safety and enforcement program. The federal agency uses this program to hold motor carriers, including owner-operators, accountable for their safety performance on the road. The program seeks to identify carriers exhibiting safety problems and issue interventions, such as warning letters and investigations. An individual driver’s safety performance and compliance with federal regulations will impact their carrier’s CSA score.
Do Truck Drivers Have a CSA Score?
Clearly, CSA scores carry a lot of weight. But do truck drivers have a CSA score? No. Individual drivers don’t have their own CSA scores. These scores are only given to carriers, including owner-operators. If an individual driver is working for a carrier, their performance will affect that carrier’s CSA score.
Individual drivers do have PSP reports, however. These contain the driver’s five-year crash history and three-year roadside inspection history.
How Does FMCSA Calculate CSA Scores?
Your company’s safety data is included in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS), which is updated once a month. The data comes from roadside inspections (including driver and vehicle violations), crash reports from the last two years, and investigation results. It includes all the following:
- The number of safety violations and inspections
- The severity of safety violations and crashes
- When safety violations occurred (more recent violations are weighted more heavily)
- The number of trucks/buses operated by a carrier
- The number of vehicle miles traveled by a carrier
- Critical violations found during investigations
This data is organized into seven categories, the Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs):
- Unsafe Driving: This includes speeding, improperly changing lanes, not wearing a seatbelt, not paying attention to the road, and other forms of reckless driving.
- Crash Indicator: This refers to the carrier’s history of crash involvement.
- Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance: This focuses on noncompliance with HOS regulations, including failing to maintain logbooks.
- Vehicle Maintenance: This refers to failing to maintain a vehicle’s brakes, lights, and other parts. It also includes failing to make necessary repairs.
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol: The possession or use of controlled substances and alcohol is recorded in this category.
- Hazardous Materials Compliance: This includes leaking containers, improper packaging, poor placarding, and more.
- Driver Fitness: Is a driver’s license invalid? Are they medically unfit to handle a commercial vehicle?
The BASIC categories help FMCSA prioritize which carriers/drivers require interventions. FMCSA groups together carriers with a similar number of safety events (such as crashes, inspections, and violations). Then, it ranks them by their BASIC data and assigns them a percentile from 0 to 100. A higher percentile indicates a worse performance, while a lower percentile is positive. FMCSA uses these rankings to determine which carriers require interventions.
How Could My Driving Record Affect My Career?
While you don’t have an individual CSA score, any violations tied to your record can follow you throughout your career and affect your job opportunities. How?
- Trucking companies will check your safety record during the hiring process, and if you have too many violations, you may find it difficult to get a job with a reputable company.
- If you have a history of violations, you’re more likely to get pulled over for an inspection. Repeat violations can also result in fines, license suspension, or even job loss.
- A clean driving record may lead to higher pay and better routes, but of course, this will depend on the company.
- Your CDL could be revoked if you commit any serious violations, such as drinking while intoxicated, driving recklessly, or excessive speeding.
How Can I Improve My Prospects?
You’ll need to focus on safety and compliance. Always drive safely, prepare for inspections, keep accurate logs, follow HOS rules, and keep up with updates to federal regulations. You might find it helpful to check out FMCSA’s CSA Help Center, which offers technical resources, fact sheets, and more. You can also explore the Driver Safety Education Center, which FMCSA advertises as a “one-stop resource for safety compliance materials on FMCSA’s CSA program.”
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