How do I check my CSA score?
Log into FMCSA's Safety Measurement System with your USDOT number and PIN to see your full CSA percentiles across all seven BASICs — the public can only see some of them, but brokers' vetting tools surface plenty.
CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) scores live in FMCSA's Safety Measurement System (SMS). Your safety performance is grouped into seven BASICs — Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Driver Fitness — each scored as a percentile against carriers with similar inspection counts, where higher means worse. To see everything, log in at the SMS website with your USDOT number and PIN (the same PIN system used for FMCSA registration; you can request a replacement if it's lost). Two BASICs — Crash Indicator and Hazmat Compliance — aren't displayed publicly, but enforcement sees them and some commercial vetting products model around them. Scores update monthly from roadside inspection and crash data, and events age out after 24 months with more recent events weighted heavier. If a violation on your record is wrong — a citation dismissed in court, a crash that wasn't your fault, an inspection attributed to the wrong carrier — challenge it through FMCSA's DataQs system; successful DataQs challenges remove the violation from your score. The reason this matters commercially: brokers and shippers screen on these numbers. A spiking Vehicle Maintenance or Unsafe Driving percentile quietly filters you out of freight you never knew you were considered for, which is why experienced carriers check SMS monthly, dispute bad data immediately, and treat clean Level 1 inspections as marketing.
- What's a bad CSA score?Percentiles above FMCSA's intervention thresholds draw attention. For Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, and HOS Compliance the threshold is 65% for general carriers (60% for hazmat, 50% for passenger carriers); for Vehicle Maintenance, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances, and Hazmat Compliance it's 80%. Many brokers apply their own stricter screens, and some flag any carrier trending upward across multiple BASICs even below the thresholds.
- How do I fix wrong data on my CSA record?File a DataQs request (dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov) with documentation — court disposition, police report, inspection paperwork. Adjudicated citations and crashes reviewed as not-preventable under FMCSA's Crash Preventability program can be removed or recoded, which directly improves the percentile.
- Do clean inspections improve my score?Yes — clean inspections add to your inspection count without adding violation points, which dilutes the percentile math. That's why carriers with strong maintenance programs sometimes volunteer for inspections: every clean Level 1 is a small score improvement and a credibility signal brokers can verify.