FMCSA follows industry comments, tweaks its Safety Management System overhaul

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced new changes to its impending Compliance, Safety, Accountability program overhaul.

This time, FMCSA followed trucking industry feedback to help improve its CSA scoring methodology. Its latest notice, “Enhanced Carrier Safety Measurement System (SMS),” outlined its responses to various industry comments.

The trucking industry often criticizes CSA scores for misrepresenting carriers’ safety. Several industry groups have called for the scores to be removed from public view.

“We all realized that we were living with an imperfect (SMS) for a long time,” Kevin Grove, director of safety and technology policy at the American Trucking Associations, said in April.

FMCSA is continually working to improve its CSA scoring methodology. The agency proposed major changes to CSA scores in February 2023. Those changes included reorganizing the safety categories, simplifying violations, changing intervention thresholds, and more.

The agency’s latest notice responded to industry concerns raised by the February 2023 proposal’s 176 public comments, which included opinions from trucking associations such as ATA, the National Tank Truck Carriers, and the Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association.

The agency followed two suggestions from commenters about changing its scoring category names and its violation groupings.

An important, but imperfect, tool

CSA scoring is a major industry issue.

The American Transportation Research Institute named CSA scoring one of carriers’ top 10 issues of 2024, noting that carriers still have concerns about how FMCSA evaluates their safety performance.

CSA scoring has been a top 10 industry concern for ATRI’s carrier respondents for eight of the last nine years. For 2024, ATRI’s respondents considered CSA scores a bigger issue than truck parking, battery-electric vehicles, driver distraction, and the diesel technician shortage.

What are CSA scores?

The Compliance, Safety, and Accountability program uses a scoring system to gauge the safety of all registered motor carriers. FMCSA manages CSA scores through its Safety Measurement System.

FMCSA uses the program to predict which carriers are most likely to have accidents. The agency deems carriers with low CSA scores as safer, while carriers with higher scores can be subject to investigations and civil penalties.

FMCSA first implemented the program nationwide in December 2010, replacing SafeStat as the official carrier safety measurement system.

The agency currently uses seven categories, known as Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, to calculate CSA scores. The seven BASICs are: crash data, driver substance use, driver qualification, hazardous materials compliance, hours of service compliance, vehicle maintenance, and unsafe driving practices.

FMCSA has regularly tweaked CSA since 2010 and almost replaced the scoring system entirely with a method called Item Response Theory. In February 2023, the agency rejected IRT and proposed its biggest CSA overhaul yet.

The score has a significant influence on a fleet’s success—even though the scoring system is less than perfect. Bad luck with non-preventable accidents can incite federal investigations, increase insurance rates, and harm client relations. ATRI found in 2014 that even a carrier’s geography can significantly affect its CSA score due to state enforcement disparities.

FMCSA’s latest changes

In response to the 2023 proposal’s comments, FMCSA made two significant changes to its SMS overhaul. The agency changed how it would rename its scoring categories and reorganized its proposed violation groups.

Renaming BASICs

In its 2023 proposal, FMCSA offered to rename the CSA scoring categories from “BASICs” to “safety categories.” ATA, in addition to the American Bus Association and Driver iQ, suggested naming them something else.

“While ATA supports renaming the BASICs, we suggest the agency refer to the reorganized categories as ‘Compliance Categories’ and not ‘Safety Categories,’” ATA argued in its comment on the proposal. “CSA SMS is an assessment of a motor carriers’ compliance with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, and as previously proven, does not necessarily indicate a motor carrier’s overall safety record.”

FMCSA agreed with the suggestion, saying it would provide a simpler and more relatable term for stakeholders. BASICs will no longer change to “safety categories” but, instead, will change to “compliance categories.”

Reorganizing violation groups

One of FMCSA’s proposed changes would simplify how the SMS groups its violations. The current scoring system uses almost 1,000 unique violations. The 2023 proposal would bunch those violations into 116 violation groups to make the system easier to understand.

One anonymous commenter pointed out that some of the new violation groups still had areas of overlap: “HOS Requirements” overlaps with “HOS Requirements—Nominal” and “Brakes” overlaps with “Brakes—OOS.”

FMCSA heeded the anonymous comment, consolidating these violation groups. FMCSA moved the eight violations within the “HOS Requirements—Nominal” group into the simpler “HOS Requirements” and moved the one violation from “Brakes—OOS” into “Brakes.”

FMCSA also announced several minute changes to its violation groups that were not requested by commenters. The agency shifted 15 other violations across the driver fitness and lighting groups.

CSA overhaul's fuzzy timeline

The published notice may contain the major last changes before FMCSA launches its scoring overhaul. However, with a new presidential administration on the way, the overhaul's implementation may slow down significantly.

The CSA Prioritization Preview website allows stakeholders to see how the CSA overhaul could change scores once implemented. However, FMCSA does not yet have an official launch date for the new methodology or website. The agency said it will eventually announce that launch date in the Federal Register.

The agency is also considering updating its SMS results more often than its current monthly frequency. FMCSA said it will share its decision in the next Federal Register notice.