A measure of the safety performance of fleets and drivers and fleet roadworthiness. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) provides each company’s safety data online via the Safety Measurement System (SMS) under the CSA Progam. CSA stands for Compliance, Safety, Accountability and is the safety compliance and enforcement program of the FMCSA that holds motor carriers and drivers accountable for their role in safety. CSA affects motor carriers, including owner-operators, by identifying those with safety problems to prioritize them for interventions such as warning letters and investigations. CSA affects drivers because their safety performance and compliance impact their safety records and, while working for a carrier, will impact their carrier’s safety record.
Fleet & Safety Managers, Dispatchers, Brokers and Shippers
FMCSA updates the SMS once a month with data from roadside inspections, including driver and vehicle violations; crash reports from the last two years; and investigation results. The SMS considers the number of safety violations and inspections, the severity of safety violations or crashes, when the safety violations occurred, with recent events weighted more heavily, the number of trucks/buses a carrier operates, the number of vehicle miles traveled and acute and critical violations found during investigations.
FMCSA organizes the SMS data into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs):
