CSA points are a topic for conversation in the trucking industry. There have been several key industry members speak up about this program, saying that the data behind the program is not sufficient to determine a link between a carrier’s SMS scores and their likelihood to crash therefore the groupings these carriers are put in are inaccurate. While there have been negatives and positives to come out of this program, there are still some areas which remain a little unclear and leave drivers, and their carriers, with questions. One such question surrounds CSA points, and how long they stay on a driver’s license. Here’s some more information on CSA points that might help drivers to understand this part of the program a little more.
How does the Safety Measurement System (SMS) work?
The SMS is in place to make sure drivers are incorporating the right safety regulations for related to transport operations. The system assesses compliance with these regulations, both for drivers and carriers. The results of this assessment are determined based on any violations in the last 12 months.
Your compliance and on-road performance is organized 7 categories, known as BASICS (Behaviour Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories):
- Unsafe Driving
- Crash Indicator
- Hours-of-Service Compliance
- Vehicle Maintenance
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol
- Hazardous Materials Compliance
- Driver Fitness
In each category, the system will create a measurement of your performance based on weighted calculations. Then you will be grouped with other carriers who have a similar number of safety events, or violations. From there you will be ranked in your grouped, and assigned a percentile from 0 – 100. A higher percentile measurement means you have a worse safety performance rating than those in the same group as you.
How long do these points stay on my record?
It’s important to know that there are two point assignments: one is for individual drivers and the other applies to carriers or companies.
Furthermore, there is some time weighting that happens in this calculation. For example, crashes that happened within the last 6 months of the date the SMS is running will have a weighting that is 3 x higher than those that happened more than 6 months ago. The weighting goes down from there as events that happened more than 6 months ago but less than 12 are rated 2 x higher than anything that happened more than 12 months ago.
When do these points drop off?
There is an update to the SMS about once a month, so the points a carrier or driver has can drop off, improve or decline fairly regularly and the system is usually pretty up to date. This means the system is using data on a rotating calendar time frame and drivers, and carriers, don’t have to wait for a full year for another assessment to be completed. The upside is that since events are time weighted, your score will improve over time – provided you don’t have any more events – so you don’t have to wait the full 24 or 36 months to have a better rating.
