Glossary
CSA & the BASICs
CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) is FMCSA's enforcement program. Its scoring engine, the Safety Measurement System (SMS), groups every carrier's roadside inspection and crash history into seven BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories):
- Unsafe Driving
- Hours-of-Service Compliance
- Driver Fitness
- Controlled Substances / Alcohol
- Vehicle Maintenance
- Hazmat Compliance
- Crash Indicator
What's public and what isn't
This is the part most explanations get wrong, so precisely: under the FAST Act (2015), FMCSA's official percentile scores are hidden from public view for all seven BASICs for property carriers. They're visible to the carrier itself, to FMCSA, and to parties the carrier authorizes. What is public is the raw data behind five BASICs: inspection counts, violations, out-of-service results, and measure values for Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances, and Vehicle Maintenance. Hazmat data is functionally hidden for the majority of carriers that don't haul hazmat, and the Crash Indicator percentile is withdrawn pending FMCSA's redesign of it.
What fleetfax shows
fleetfax computes its own peer benchmarks from the public raw data: each carrier's violation and out-of-service performance ranked against carriers of similar size, with recent trends. These are labeled as fleetfax peer estimates because that's what they are; no tool can show you official FMCSA percentiles without per-carrier authorization, and we say so plainly rather than presenting a complete-looking score the public record doesn't support. When a fleetfax peer estimate sits at or above FMCSA's published intervention threshold, the report flags it.
Related terms
Safety rating
FMCSA's official Satisfactory / Conditional / Unsatisfactory grade from a compliance review. Roughly 94% of carriers have never received one.
Out-of-service (OOS) rate
The percentage of a carrier's roadside inspections that ended with the vehicle or driver ordered off the road. Compared against published national averages, it's a core inspection-failure metric.
Roadside inspection (levels 1 to 6)
An enforcement officer's examination of a truck, its driver, or both, at weigh stations and roadside stops. The most abundant safety evidence in the public record; results feed OOS rates and CSA scoring.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. This page explains terminology; it is not legal advice.