A "CSA score" is a motor carrier’s percentile in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS), calculated from roadside inspection violations and crashes in categories called BASICs; FMCSA uses it to pick carriers for warning letters and investigations. Drivers do not have their own SMS score. What follows a driver from job to job is the Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) record, which shows the driver’s most recent five years of crash data and three years of roadside inspection data, and which an employer may only see with the driver’s written consent.
This page explains how the two systems work, what changes FMCSA has announced to SMS, and how drivers and carriers correct records. Roadside inspections happen at the places listed in the weigh station directory; the vehicle side of an inspection is covered in the DVIR guide and the annual inspection guide.
CSA, SMS and safety ratings: three different things
- CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) is FMCSA’s enforcement program.
- SMS is the measurement system inside it. FMCSA describes it in the Federal Register as the tool it uses to identify high-risk motor carriers for investigations, and that FMCSA and state partners use to prioritize carriers for inspections and less intensive interventions such as automated warning letters (89 FR 91874, November 2024). SMS results are recalculated monthly.
- A safety rating is separate. Under 49 CFR 385.3 a rating of Satisfactory, Conditional or Unsatisfactory is assigned after an examination of the carrier’s operations against the safety fitness standard in 385.5; a carrier that has not been rated is "unrated". A high SMS percentile can lead to an investigation, and the investigation can lead to a rating, but the percentile is not itself a rating. A new entrant safety audit does not produce a rating (385.3).
Since the FAST Act of 2015, FMCSA has removed SMS percentiles and alerts from the public website for carriers transporting property. Passenger carrier percentiles, and inspection, crash, investigation and registration data for all carriers, remain public (89 FR 91874). A property carrier can see its own percentiles by logging in.
The categories (BASICs)
SMS currently groups violations into seven categories, called BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories), as described in FMCSA’s 2023 notice (88 FR 9954):
- Unsafe Driving, which covers moving violations such as speeding, reckless driving and texting;
- Crash Indicator, which is built from reportable crashes rather than roadside violations;
- Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance;
- Vehicle Maintenance;
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol;
- Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance; and
- Driver Fitness.
FMCSA publishes the full list of violations that fall into each category.
In each category SMS weights each violation by severity, currently on a scale of 1 to 10, and compares carriers with similar numbers of inspections to produce a percentile (88 FR 9954). A higher percentile is worse. Hours-of-service violations, for example, count in the HOS Compliance BASIC; the fines and out-of-service consequences behind them are on the hours-of-service violations page.
The changes FMCSA has announced
In November 2024 FMCSA announced an enhanced SMS methodology (89 FR 91874) after a public preview. The announced changes are:
- BASICs renamed compliance categories.
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol violations, and all operating-while-out-of-service violations, moved into Unsafe Driving.
- Vehicle Maintenance split into Vehicle Maintenance and a new Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed category, for defects a driver could have found on a pre-trip inspection.
- Violations consolidated from about 959 codes (plus 14 new ones) into 116 groups (88 FR 9954).
- Severity weights simplified from 1 to 10 to 1 or 2: out-of-service violations, and Unsafe Driving violations that are disqualifying offenses under 383.51, weigh 2; everything else weighs 1.
- Proportionate percentiles instead of safety event groups, to remove jumps when a carrier moves into a new group.
- Percentiles in HOS, the two Vehicle Maintenance categories, Hazardous Materials and Driver Fitness assigned only to carriers with a violation in the past 12 months. Under the method FMCSA described in 2023 as current, a carrier gets a percentile in the HOS, Vehicle Maintenance and Driver Fitness BASICs if its last inspection in the past two years had a violation.
- The utilization factor extended to carriers driving up to 250,000 vehicle miles per power unit.
Status, checked 27 September 2026: the November 2024 notice said a follow-up Federal Register notice would announce the launch date of the enhanced SMS website. We did not find that follow-up notice in the Federal Register. Check the CSA website for whether the new methodology is live before relying on either set of rules.
What a high percentile leads to
A carrier at or above the intervention threshold in a category is prioritized. The thresholds differ by category and by carrier type (passenger, hazmat and general), and FMCSA’s 2023 notice proposed raising those for Driver Fitness and Hazardous Materials, which it found least correlated with crash risk (88 FR 9954). Interventions range from automated warning letters to targeted roadside inspections and investigations. By statute, section 5305(a) of the FAST Act requires FMCSA to make sure a review is conducted of carriers that show, through performance data, that they are among the highest-risk carriers for four consecutive months (89 FR 91874). An investigation can end in a safety rating under Part 385.
Do drivers have a CSA score?
Not in SMS. SMS measures motor carriers. But roadside violations are recorded against the inspection, and the inspection identifies the driver, so the same events appear in two places: the carrier’s SMS data and the driver’s PSP record. A driver with many violations therefore affects every carrier he or she drives for, which is why carriers screen drivers through PSP.
The PSP report
PSP exists because 49 U.S.C. 31150 requires FMCSA to give pre-employment screening services electronic access to three kinds of MCMIS reports: CMV crash reports, inspection reports with no driver-related violations, and inspection reports with serious driver-related safety violations. FMCSA’s system of records notice for PSP (77 FR 42548, July 2012) describes the record as containing the most recent five years of crash data and the most recent three years of roadside inspection data, including serious safety violations, for an individual driver, as a snapshot of the latest MCMIS extract. Motor carriers and individual drivers can both purchase records.
The driver’s protections in the statute
- A screening may not be run without the driver’s written consent (31150(b)(2)).
- Released information must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (31150(b)(1)).
- It may not go to anyone other than the requesting carrier or the driver, unless the law allows (31150(b)(3)).
- FMCSA must provide a procedure to correct inaccurate information in a timely manner (31150(b)(4)).
- Use is voluntary for carriers and may be used only during pre-employment assessment (31150(c)). A carrier may not use PSP to monitor a driver it already employs.
A "serious driver-related violation" is defined in 31150(d) as one that results in the driver being prohibited from continuing to operate until it is corrected: in other words, a driver out-of-service violation. Drivers can buy their own PSP record, which is the best way to know what an employer will see.
How long violations stay
| Where | What shows | How long | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| PSP (driver) | Roadside inspections | Most recent 3 years | PSP system of records notice, 77 FR 42548 |
| PSP (driver) | Crashes | Most recent 5 years | Same |
| SMS (carrier), current method | Percentile in HOS, Vehicle Maintenance, Driver Fitness | Assigned only if the last inspection in the past two years had a violation | 88 FR 9954 |
| SMS (carrier), announced method | Percentile in HOS, VM, VM Driver Observed, HM, Driver Fitness | Assigned only with a violation in the past 12 months | 89 FR 91874 |
Challenging a record: DataQs
DataQs is FMCSA’s online system for carriers, drivers and others to request review of federal and state crash and inspection data they believe is incomplete or incorrect. FMCSA’s April 2026 notice (91 FR 20561) says DataQs received 8,314 crash requests and 63,548 inspection and violation requests in 2024, and sets requirements that states must follow to keep their enforcement grant funding:
- States must accept and review in good faith all inspection-related requests filed within 3 years of the inspection and crash-related requests within 5 years of the crash.
- A request closed with no data correction must explain the decision-maker, the evidence reviewed, the specific reasons, and how to appeal.
- States must offer a multi-stage review, with Reconsideration and Final Review levels, and the requester must state the factual or legal error being appealed.
When a ticket is dismissed
If a violation at inspection also led to a citation in court, the court result can change the record. Under FMCSA’s adjudicated citations policy (79 FR 32491, June 2014), the driver or carrier files a DataQs request with certified documentation of the outcome, and:
| Court result | SMS | PSP |
|---|---|---|
| Dismissed without fine or punitive court costs | Violation removed | Violation removed |
| Not guilty | Violation removed | Violation removed |
| Dismissed with fine or punitive court costs | Not removed | Not removed |
| Convicted of a different or lesser charge | Noted as "resulted in conviction of a different charge", severity weight changed to 1 | Noted the same way |
Crashes you did not cause
Under the Crash Preventability Determination Program, carriers and drivers can ask FMCSA through DataQs to decide whether an eligible crash was preventable. FMCSA’s December 2024 notice (89 FR 96269) lists 21 eligible crash types, including being struck in the rear, being struck while legally stopped or parked, being hit by a wrong-way or impaired driver, striking an animal, and any crash where video shows the sequence of events. A crash found not preventable stays listed on the public SMS site in a separate table but is left out of the Crash Indicator calculation, and the not-preventable determination is noted on the driver’s PSP record.
Worked example
Example, applying the rules above. A driver is inspected in May 2025 and cited for speeding and for driving past the 11-hour limit, for which she is placed out of service under 395.13. In court the speeding ticket is dismissed with no fine. She files a DataQs request with the certified dismissal, and the speeding violation is removed under the 2014 policy. The hours-of-service violation stays. When she applies to a new carrier in March 2027, the carrier asks for her written consent and buys her PSP record: it shows the May 2025 inspection with the out-of-service violation, because it is within the most recent three years of inspections. By mid-2028 that inspection falls outside the three-year PSP window. Her old carrier’s SMS data also carried the violations; under the announced method, the hours-of-service violation would stop counting toward its HOS percentile 12 months after the inspection if there were no newer HOS violations.
Protecting your own record as a driver
- Buy your own PSP record before you job-hunt, so nothing on it surprises you.
- Keep court paperwork. A dismissal or not-guilty finding only helps once certified documentation reaches DataQs.
- Do a real pre-trip inspection. Under the announced SMS changes, defects a driver could have found get their own category, Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed.
- Ask for the inspection report at the roadside and check it for errors in names, license numbers and violation codes while you still remember the stop.
- Use the Crash Preventability Determination Program for eligible crashes, and keep dashcam video, which one of the 21 eligible crash types relies on.
Common mistakes
- Talking about a driver’s "CSA score". SMS scores carriers. Look at the PSP record for the driver’s history.
- Assuming a violation disappears when no ticket is written. Violations are recorded on the inspection report; the 2014 policy only changes the record when a related citation is adjudicated and documented through DataQs.
- Paying a fine with a dismissal. A dismissal with a fine or punitive court costs does not remove the violation.
- Filing DataQs too late. States must accept inspection requests only within 3 years.
- Using PSP on current employees. 49 U.S.C. 31150(c) limits it to pre-employment.