How Your CSA Score Affects Truck Insurance
Your FMCSA CSA score — the SMS percentiles across seven BASIC categories like Unsafe Driving and HOS Compliance — is public, and underwriters use it as a direct signal of how safely your fleet runs. Strong scores earn better pricing and market access; poor scores raise rates or close markets entirely.
What CSA measures
CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) rolls your roadside inspections, violations, and crashes into the Safety Measurement System, which scores you by percentile in categories called BASICs — Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances, and others.
Because inspection and violation data is public, insurers pull it directly. A fleet above the intervention thresholds in a BASIC looks riskier before an underwriter ever speaks to you.
How to improve it
Clean up the inputs: coach drivers on the violations showing up at roadside, keep maintenance documented so vehicle BASICs stay low, and manage hours-of-service tightly with your ELDs.
Dispute inaccurate data through FMCSA’s DataQs system — wrongly attributed crashes or violations can inflate your scores and your premium until corrected.
Frequently asked
- Do insurance companies look at CSA scores?
- Yes. CSA / SMS data is public, and trucking underwriters use it as a core input. Strong BASIC percentiles earn better pricing and more market options; scores above intervention thresholds raise rates or make some markets decline.