How to Improve Your CSA Scores: Actionable Steps Fleet Owners Can Take

Improving your CSA scores is an ongoing operational discipline. But it’s also not as complicated as it might seem. Most improvements come down to four areas: knowing where you stand, fixing data errors, training your people, and building systems that prevent violations before they happen.

Step 1: Know Your Numbers

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Start by pulling your current SMS data from the FMCSA’s website (ai.fmcsa.dot.gov) and reviewing every BASIC category. Don’t just look at the percentile rankings, dig into the underlying violations. Which drivers are generating the most roadside inspection violations? Which inspection locations or routes seem to produce more violations? Are there patterns across time?

Set a cadence for reviewing this data. Monthly is ideal for active fleets. Create accountability around it and assign someone on your team to own score monitoring and report to leadership regularly. What gets measured gets managed.

Step 2: Challenge Inaccurate Data Through the DataQs System

One of the most underutilized tools in fleet management is the FMCSA’s DataQs system (dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov). This is the formal process for challenging violations that were recorded incorrectly, assigned to the wrong carrier, or that have already been resolved through a court or agency decision.

Data errors in the MCMIS system are more common than most people realize. A violation recorded against the wrong DOT number, a crash assigned to your fleet that involved a different carrier, an inspection outcome that doesn’t match the paperwork, all of these can inflate your scores unfairly.

Here’s the process:

• Pull your inspection and crash reports from SMS and review each violation carefully
• Identify any records that appear incorrect or that you have documentation to dispute
• Submit a Data Quality (DataQs) challenge with supporting documentation — driver logs, repair records, court dispositions, etc.
• Follow up on open challenges; the process typically involves the state agency that generated the report reviewing and responding to your challenge

This isn’t a fast process, but it’s worth the effort. Even removing a handful of incorrectly recorded violations can meaningfully improve your percentile ranking.

Step 3: Build a Pre-Trip Inspection Culture

Vehicle Maintenance is one of the highest-volume BASIC categories for violations, and it’s also one of the most controllable. The most effective thing you can do is take pre-trip inspections seriously. Don’t treat it as a checkbox, but as a genuine safety practice.

That means:

• Training drivers on what to actually look for during a pre-trip, not just walking around the truck
• Creating a standardized inspection form and requiring drivers to complete and submit it before each dispatch
• Building a maintenance workflow so that defects reported during pre-trips get addressed before the vehicle goes back out
• Using your preventive maintenance schedule proactively

 A fleet that consistently conducts thorough pre-trips and fixes defects before they’re discovered at a weigh station will see its Vehicle Maintenance score improve over time. More importantly, it reduces the odds of a breakdown or accident caused by equipment failure.

Step 4: Address Hours-of-Service at a Systems Level

HOS violations are rarely a driver problem in isolation. They’re usually a dispatch and culture problem. If drivers are regularly pushing against hours limits or receiving violations for logbook issues, ask why. Are routes being planned with realistic drive times? Are dispatch teams trained on HOS rules? Is there pressure, spoken or unspoken, to make a delivery that requires bending the rules?

If you’re still working through ELD compliance, get current. Electronic logging devices remove most of the ambiguity around hours and create a reliable paper trail for both drivers and fleets. Beyond compliance, they give fleet managers real-time visibility into driver hours, which makes better dispatch decisions possible.

Train drivers not just on the rules, but on why they exist. Fatigued driving is dangerous, and drivers who understand the stakes are more likely to treat their hours as a genuine safety issue rather than a bureaucratic hurdle.

Step 5: Invest in Driver Training

Generic annual safety training is better than nothing, but targeted training is where the real improvement comes from. Look at your Unsafe Driving violations and identify the patterns. If speeding is the primary issue, a targeted speed management program will do more good than a general safety refresher.

Consider these approaches:

• Use telematics data to identify high-risk driving behaviors and coach individual drivers based on their actual performance
• Implement a ride-along program where safety managers or experienced drivers observe and coach newer operators in the field
• Address Driver Fitness issues proactively. Build a system to track CDL renewals, medical certificate expirations, and endorsement requirements so nothing lapses
• Celebrate improvement. Recognition and incentive programs around safe driving metrics help build the culture you’re trying to create

Step 6: Understand the Two-Year Rolling Window

CSA scores are calculated using data from a rolling 24-month window which means older violations carry less weight as time passes, and violations more than two years old fall off entirely. This means that if your scores are currently elevated, consistent improvement will show results within a defined timeframe.

It also means that a burst of violations in a short period can have an outsized impact on your current scores, even if your recent performance has been clean. Understanding this dynamic helps you interpret your scores more accurately and set realistic expectations for improvement timelines.

Step 7: Engage Your Insurance Broker as a Partner

If you work with an insurance broker who understands trucking, bring them into your CSA improvement efforts. They have visibility into how underwriters interpret different score profiles, what thresholds tend to trigger premium adjustments, and which carriers are prioritizing what kinds of risks.

A good broker can help you benchmark your scores against industry expectations, identify which BASICs are creating the most insurance exposure, and advise on the kinds of safety investments that carry the most weight with underwriters. That relationship should be collaborative. The more your broker understands about your operation, the better they can advocate for you.

Building a Culture of Compliance

All of the tactical steps above matter, but the most durable improvements come from carriers who treat safety and compliance as core to their identity. That starts at the top. When leadership visibly prioritizes safety, invests in training, enforces compliance policies consistently, and holds people accountable without exception, it creates an environment where drivers and staff take it seriously too.

CSA scores are a lagging indicator, meaning they reflect decisions and behaviors that already happened. The real goal is to build an operation where the choices being made every day naturally produce clean scores, because safety is simply how the business operates.

That kind of culture doesn’t happen overnight. But it does happen. And the fleets that build it don’t just have better scores, they have fewer crashes, lower insurance costs, better driver retention, and stronger customer relationships. The business case is clear.

We hope this series has given you a clearer picture of what CSA scores mean, how they work, and what you can do about them. Whether you’re a fleet owner looking to protect and grow your operation or an insurance broker helping clients navigate the complexities of trucking compliance, understanding these fundamentals is the foundation everything else is built on.