The Reliability of Csa Data and Scores

Executive Summary Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) is FMCSA’s safety monitoring and measurement system used to identify unsafe carriers and prioritize them for future interventions (e.g., audits). The agency also encourages third parties to use CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS) scores as a tool for making safety-based business decisions. FMCSA hopes to leverage the power of the marketplace to make judgments about carriers and, as a result, compel them to improve their safety performance. SMS scores also have the potential to be used by plaintiffs’ attorneys and prosecutors in the context of post-crash litigation.