The Key to Good CSA BASIC Scores

Welcome to CSA Basics.

CSA Basics.

The podcast where we talk about all things related to safety, compliance, and insurance for the trucking industry. We're here to help you save money, save time, and save lives. Now, here's your host, CEO of Carrier Risk Solutions, Sam Tucker.

All right, today we want to talk about a topic that's a common question that a lot of our prospects and clients have, and that is, how do we improve our CSA scores? How do we decrease our CSA basic score? Yeah, so, you know, I think a lot of people have a misconception about the CSA score. Or overall look better. And with that, what we've come up with is the number one way you can do that is to avoid roadside inspections altogether. Now, it's easily understood that the CSA BASIC scores, it's all a real function of roadside inspections. So the number one way to prevent those scores from increasing or to get them to decrease if they're already at a high level is to avoid roadside inspections. So you'll think that, especially with vehicle maintenance violations, a good idea would be to, okay, let's get the truck dressed up and run Run it through the weigh station and hope they'll be pulled over and they'll do a Level 1 inspection, it'll be good, and that will help improve our scores. But that's actually a real fallacy. That's not how it works. And those gentlemen and ladies are there to do a job and they like to do it very well. So in doing that, if you go out there and looking for trouble, you're gonna kind of find it in a lot of ways. So you may think you have the truck dressed up perfectly, it looks good, everything checks out, and they go through and There's a bonehead mistake made or there's something overlooked. And then where you think you're gonna have a good inspection, you end up adding points to your CSA scores. So that's a problem. But what we found in doing our research and just experience as well is that there's really 5 violations that really sink a motor carrier's CSA scores. Let's go through those 5 violations. To help you remember what those are, we came up with this really silly— And it's called BUSTED, B-U-S-S-T-E-D. Don't get busted. So we'll go through each of these to explain about what the underlying violations are. And I promise you, if you can get your drivers to avoid each of these 5 violations, then you'll reduce your number of roadside inspections by 85, 90%. I promise. It's just that magical. And it's Not really anything that crazy or exciting. It's just something that if you look at the ways that law enforcement officers operate out there and look at how they try to surveil motor carriers, then this will make a lot more sense. So let's get right into it. You'll see what I'm talking about. So the Don't Get Busted, the B stands for burnt light bulbs. The U stands for unrestrained drivers. The S stands for speeding violations. The second S stands for sign violations. So you're talking about either failure to be in the right lane or failure to obey traffic safety advices, those kind of violations. And the T stands for texting or using cell phone while driving. So if you look at each of these 5 violations, you try to see some commonality between them, and it's really easy to see that the most common thing with each of those violations is that they're easily observable by law enforcement. So the cops are out there looking for truck drivers just like they are for four-wheelers too, but when they're out there looking, it's easy to see what they observe. And so if they're seeing a driver who's speeding compared to one who's not, that driver's automatically painting a big target on the side of their truck saying, hey, pull me over instead of that guy. So it's really not necessarily about being the best, it's about not being the low-hanging fruit on the totem pole. So with that, again, let's just look at them again. B stands for burnt light bulbs. Lighting violations, there's been over a million violations, generally speaking, given each year by DOT enforcement officers. So a million violations, that's about half of the violations given each year are directly related to lighting violations or reflective sheeting violations. So if you wanna look for a very good place to start to say, okay, what can we do, especially in terms of our vehicle maintenance violations? Look for your lights. Make sure all the lights are operational on each of the trucks and trailers, and make sure that everything from a reflective sheeting standpoint is taken care of too. For unrestrained drivers, just make sure your driver wears the seatbelt all the time. A lot of folks can put different little stickers in the truck that says, hey, be sure you buckle up, just as a reminder and things like that. But at the same time too, it's really just trying to remind drivers You know, that you care about them, and then secondly too, that they should care about themselves enough to buckle up. The first S against S is speeding. So speeding violations are prevalent. That's also another major contributor, especially in the unsafe driving basic scores. But what you can do there too, I mean, it's not necessarily speeding on interstate highways. It's really more the 2-lane and 3-lane, or 2-lane and 4-lane roads out there where speeding violations become more prevalent. And so truck drivers are subject to speed traps just like the four-wheelers are when they're going out there and the speed limit drops from a 55 to a 45 and they're just not paying very close attention. Or if they enter into a speed construction zone, then that could also cause potential problems too. So definitely places you wanna be careful of. And then also with the sign violations, you know, it's mainly coming down to failure to obey traffic safety devices, running stop signs, running through traffic signals, pushing a yellow signal that turns to red, the cop pulls in behind them and pulls you over. Those are problems, but again, too, those aren't as easily avoidable in a lot of situations because it takes a lot to stop an 80,000-pound vehicle. But at the same time, too, there are defensive driving techniques that can be employed for drivers to actually understand once they're approaching an intersection if the light's been green for a while, and they can tell these things, too. There's ways to potentially avoid those. So you want to make sure they obey all traffic safety devices if at all possible. And the T, texting, using cell phone while driving, there's just no excuse for not using a hands-free device these days. So if the driver Whoever has a cell phone or any kind of mobile communications device in their hands while they're behind the truck or behind the wheel of the truck, that's gonna be a problem. And again, it's easily observable by law enforcement. They see the phone in the hand, they see the phone to the ear and the hand to the ear, that's a problem, that's gonna get pulled over and that's gonna increase the opportunity for them to have a roadside inspection. Now, each of these violations in themselves can cause problems and cause your scores to increase, but the other thing too is that these are kind of gateway violations. Now, what I mean by that is, is that even though you have these violations and these are significant, Mm-hmm. A DOT officer isn't going to inspect the logs of a truck unless they pull them over. They're not gonna check the brake measurements unless they pull them over. They're not going to check the tire tread depth unless they pull them over. You see what I'm saying? So with that, if they can avoid these 5 violations to begin with, they don't get pulled over, and then you don't have brake safety issues. You don't have, or let me rephrase that, you may have brake safety issues, but those brake safety issues aren't coming to the attention of the FMCSA. So with that, avoiding roadside inspections is the number one way you can actually help improve your CSA scores. The only other thing that really helps CSA scores or gets them to go lower is time, 'cause the time-weighting factors that are built into the algorithm that the FMCSA uses with the CSA basic scores, it's really time's the only thing that heals. So it's really time and not getting anything else, not getting new violations as time goes on. So with those 2 things in mind, we just ask you, hey, don't get busted. Don't get B-U-S-S-T-E-D. Don't get busted. Have your drivers focus on that. And then secondly too, it's just a wait-and-see game. You know, motor carriers, at the same time, you know, it's— you can have 1 power unit or 100 power units or 1,000 power units, and that same 24-month process applies. So if you receive a violation today, it's not gonna fully stop affecting you for 2 years. So with that information in hand, those are the 2 number one types of advice we can give to help prevent increases in your CSA scores and also just how to prevent roadside inspections entirely. If you have any questions, we'd love to help you out. Our phone number is 855-211-5550. See you soon.

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