Improve your CSA score with effective tips on driver safety, vehicle maintenance, and smart scheduling. Enhance your fleet’s efficiency and compliance.
Road safety is crucial for all delivery companies. Every year, the US sees around 100,000 road accidents and injuries involving large trucks, leading to significant losses, especially for transport businesses.
Having oversight from higher authorities helps businesses maintain better road safety. One such program is the CSA, which uses scores to assess the safety of your service.
In this article, we'll explain what a CSA score is, what factors affect the CSA score for drivers, and share some helpful tips to improve your CSA score.
In this post:
CSA stands for Compliance, Safety, and Accountability. It's a score given to commercial vehicles, ranging from 0 to 100, that shows how safe and compliant a vehicle, driver, or fleet company is.
It's important to know that individual drivers don't have their own CSA scores. Instead, the score is assigned to carriers based on their DOT number. So, if a driver breaks any compliance rules, the carrier gets the violation, not the driver.
The Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program was launched in 2010 by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Its main goal is to keep vehicles safe on the road and cut down on fatal crashes.
This FMCSA regulation has helped owners and commercial drivers keep a good score, avoid roadside violations, and ensure smoother deliveries and transport.
Many business owners might be confused about how CSA scores are calculated. The CSA program organizes safety violations into the BASIC category (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories).
The CSA Safety Management System tracks seven BASIC categories to calculate the score:
Note that crash indicators and hazardous materials compliance scores aren't currently public. Each factor is scored based on state-reported crash data, including the pattern and severity of crashes.
The main thing to know about CSA scores is that lower is better. A score of 100 is bad and reflects poorly on a carrier vehicle's performance and condition.
Good CSA scores can help businesses get lower insurance premiums, attract better clients, and face fewer DOT audits or roadside inspections. The FMCSA's safety measurement system often investigates vehicles and trucks with scores over 65%.
If BASIC scores go above acceptable levels, CSA sends warning letters. FMCSA's Safety Measurement System (SMS) updates safety performance data monthly. These warning letters don't need a direct response; they're meant to encourage better safety practices before issues arise.
You can check your CSA score easily by following these steps:
If you don't have a PIN, request one from USDOT. Delivery usually takes 4-7 days.
Here are 6 tips to help keep your CSA score low or reduce a high score:
Every fleet management company should focus on vehicle maintenance to avoid violations. Parts like tires and brakes experience a lot of wear and tear. It's easier to maintain them regularly than to get caught off guard with bad tires during a roadside inspection.
Most road crashes happen due to driver negligence, so hiring drivers with great safety records is crucial.
Selecting drivers with good driving histories helps avoid future issues. The hiring process should include thorough background checks and using the Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) records.
PSP reports provide individual driver safety records, which are helpful indicators. Additionally, evaluating on-duty performance is essential to ensure driver competence.
A simple tip is to perform quick pre-trip and post-trip inspections for all vehicles. Unchecked parts, like broken taillights, can significantly impact your CSA scores and lead to violations.
Creating a simple checklist for vehicle maintenance is the easiest way to ensure inspections are done. This checklist should be used company-wide and serve as a quick reminder to check all parts before each trip.
Make sure drivers have flexible working hours. Every year, about 8,000 truck accidents are caused by tired or drowsy drivers. This high number of crashes can be prevented with better planning.
Back-to-back shifts are risky and should be avoided as they can lead to serious medical violations. Don’t push fatigued drivers to make deliveries. Instead, create a system where everyone works similar hours and gets adequate rest.
Poor driving affects your CSA score and overall company safety. To improve CSA, it's important to organize driver training and safety programs.
Since you can't be with the driver all the time, fleet tracking software is useful. An Electronic Logging Device (ELD) helps track drivers' hours of operation and monitors their driving behavior. This allows you to provide feedback or training as needed, improving fleet safety and reducing CSA violations.
To stay competitive, it's important to meet customer expectations. However, creating a safety culture is equally crucial. Promoting a safe driving culture includes offering incentives, taking disciplinary actions against violations, and implementing bonus structures that encourage drivers to prioritize the CSA score.
Clients prefer carriers with good CSA scores. Now that you know what a good CSA score means, it's important to implement processes that ensure top-notch transportation service. Using fleet management software to enhance your business’s performance is a key step.
eLogii is a powerful solution for this. eLogii is a route optimization software that helps businesses improve delivery performance.
Here is how eLogii can help you improve your CSA score:
With eLogii, you can plan efficient routes and quickly dispatch your drivers. eLogii’s advanced routing algorithm selects the fastest and most efficient routes for you.
With just a click, you can send route notifications directly to your drivers' mobile devices. This keeps communication clear and boosts productivity.
Say goodbye to worries about overworked drivers. eLogii lets you reassign tasks to different drivers easily, keeping deliveries on track and maintaining fleet safety.
You can also monitor each driver’s performance and ensure they work safely. Simplify your job planning and execution with eLogii, saving you time and effort.
Live ETA updates are useful because they provide real-time visibility into delivery progress, allowing you to adjust plans and keep operations running smoothly quickly. You can rely on live updates on your dashboard as routes are executed, such as changes in ETA if traffic slows down.
To access these updates, go to Planning ⇒ Driver Route ⇒ Live ETA.
By clicking on any assigned driver on the right side of the screen, you can zoom in on their route and see their current location and all scheduled stops.
Hovering over any stop will show deutails like the task name, current location, time window, and ETA.
Preventing accidents and mishaps is a top priority for businesses that use large vehicles to transport goods and services. Your CSA score indicates how safe your commercial vehicles are on the road.
A great way to start improving your CSA score is by assigning optimized routes to your drivers. This helps reduce the time vehicles and drivers spend on the road, boosts driver productivity, and lowers vehicle wear and tear.
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