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Get a Free ConsultationCSA stands for Compliance, Safety, Accountability, FMCSA’s data-driven safety compliance and enforcement program. CSA compliance means keeping your roadside inspection, crash, and investigation record clean enough that FMCSA does not prioritize your company for warning letters, investigations, or a poor safety rating.
Our team monitors your CSA data and helps fix the programs behind it.
CSA is how FMCSA finds and acts on motor carriers with safety problems. It holds carriers and drivers accountable for their role in safety, and it applies to every carrier, including owner-operators.
Drivers matter because their violations count against the carrier they drive for. A speeding or logbook violation written during a roadside inspection lands on your company’s record under your USDOT number, whether or not the officer also writes a ticket.
FMCSA put the program’s measurement system in place in December 2010, and it is still the system used today. For the full set of federal rules your programs must meet, see our DOT compliance services page.
CSA has three core components: the Safety Measurement System (SMS), interventions, and the Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) rating system. FMCSA sums them up as measure, intervene, and evaluate.
| Component | What it does | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Safety Measurement System (SMS) | Ranks carriers using roadside inspections and crash reports from the last two years, plus investigation results | Your percentiles decide whether FMCSA prioritizes you for action |
| Interventions | Contacts and works with carriers that have safety performance and compliance problems | A warning letter, a targeted inspection, or an investigation |
| Safety Fitness Determination | Assigns a safety rating under 49 CFR Part 385 | An Unsatisfactory rating stops you from operating |
FMCSA updates the SMS once a month and sorts the data into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs): Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Driver Fitness. Our guide to the 7 CSA BASICs explains what each one measures.
| BASIC | Most carriers | Hazmat / passenger carriers |
|---|---|---|
| Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, HOS Compliance | 65% | 60% / 50% |
| Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Driver Fitness | 80% | 75% / 65% |
| Hazardous Materials Compliance | 80% | 80% / 80% |
Unsafe driving, crashes, and hours of service have the lowest thresholds because they are the most closely tied to crash risk. Our article on unsafe driving violations and CSA scores shows how a single BASIC is calculated.
Under the FAST Act, FMCSA removed percentiles and alerts from the public SMS website for property carriers. Passenger carrier percentiles and alerts are still public, as are inspection, crash, investigation, and registration data for every carrier. The Crash Indicator and Hazardous Materials Compliance BASICs are never public. Complete results are available to enforcement and to carriers logged in to their own profile.
FMCSA usually starts with a warning letter, and if your safety performance does not improve, the next step is typically an investigation. Its interventions fall into three categories.
You do not need to respond directly to a warning letter. FMCSA keeps watching your SMS data, and further interventions can lead to fines or the suspension or revocation of your operating authority. Our guide on how to recover from a DOT violation walks through each stage.
A safety rating comes only from an onsite investigation, not from your percentiles. FMCSA states that BASIC percentiles do not affect a carrier’s safety rating, and that a rating reflects the date of the investigation rather than updating monthly.
A proposed Unsatisfactory rating becomes final after 60 days, or 45 days for passenger and placarded hazmat carriers (49 CFR 385.11). The carrier is then barred from operating from the 61st day (46th day for passenger and placarded hazmat carriers), and FMCSA issues an out-of-service order and revokes its operating authority (49 CFR 385.13).
You can ask for an upgrade at any time after correcting the problems, in writing and with evidence. FMCSA reviews requests from carriers with a proposed or final Unsatisfactory rating within 45 days, or 30 days for passenger and placarded hazmat carriers (49 CFR 385.17).
CSA compliance comes from the programs behind each BASIC, not from the scores themselves. Four habits keep your record where you want it.
An honest caveat: no service can remove an accurate violation from your record. FMCSA approved an enhanced SMS in November 2024 that renames the BASICs “compliance categories” and groups more than 2,000 violation codes into about 100 violation groups, but as of October 2026 it has not launched, and FMCSA tells carriers to keep using the current SMS website.
We monitor your drivers’ performance, design and implement the policies and training your operation needs, and help you prepare for audits. CSA support is part of each of our compliance programs for trucking companies.
Use the form below with your USDOT number and fleet size. Our team will review where you stand and recommend the program that fits.
CSA stands for Compliance, Safety, Accountability. It is FMCSA’s safety compliance and enforcement program, which uses roadside inspection, crash, and investigation data to identify carriers with safety problems and prioritize them for interventions.
Interventions and the Safety Fitness Determination. Interventions range from warning letters and targeted roadside inspections to investigations and follow-on actions such as a Notice of Claim. The Safety Fitness Determination assigns a Satisfactory, Conditional, or Unsatisfactory rating after an onsite investigation.
Usually you first get a warning letter. If your data does not improve, FMCSA can open an offsite or onsite investigation, which can lead to a Notice of Violation, a Notice of Claim with civil penalties, a safety rating, or an order to stop operating.
The SMS uses events from the last 24 months. Violations from the past 6 months carry a time weight of 3, those from 6 to 12 months a weight of 2, and older ones a weight of 1 until they drop off.
No. FMCSA uses BASIC percentiles to decide whom to prioritize for interventions. A safety rating comes only from an onsite investigation, although a high percentile can be what triggers that investigation.
The rules and figures on this page come from these official sources, checked on October 5, 2026.