CSA gathers all information from violations and inspections to create scores within each of the seven BASIC scoring categories.  The old system only looked at the most serious violations.  Some aspects of these scores are:

• Different violations and aspects of crashes hold different weight.

• More recent violations and crashes hold heavier weight.

• Carriers are “normalized” based on fleet size and amount of inspections (exposure).

• Within this group the carrier is ranked compared to their peers.  A rank of 80% means that 79% of carriers within the carrier’s peer group rank better than the carrier in this category.

• Information is gathered daily and Percentile Ranks are updated once a month.

The current Safety Ratings of Satisfactory, conditional and Unsatisfactory will eventually be replaced with (Safety Fitness Determinations) of Continue to Operate, Marginal and Unfit.  These ratings, however, will not be available for a quite some time (possibly 2012).   This process was delayed due to data issues. Once the data is corrected, rulemaking then needs to be implemented (which is a long process) before the ratings will be assigned.

The FMCSA states that when they make CSA public on December 5, 2010, they will shut off SafeStat.  They also stated that whatever was available in SafeStat will be available in CSA (regulations require the old ratings to remain in place).  There is currently no example at this time.  There is the expectation that there will be carriers who have Satisfactory Safety Ratings and yet poor Basic Scores since many of the Safety Ratings are old and the Basic Score data is continuously updated.

At this time, the FMCSA is only giving safety ratings if the carrier is being assigned or downgraded to a Conditional or Unsatisfactory rating.  No Satisfactory ratings are being issued.  If the carrier is deemed Satisfactory after a full compliance review, the review is listed as “unrated.”  So, by the time the CSA 2010 ratings are released (possibly 2 years away) this will leave a lot of carriers without ratings.  This makes the scores that much more valuable and the SaferStat Ratings that much less.

As CSA 2010 is on the verge of a complete program rollout, there are a few issues to be looked at.  View these concerns and System Limitations.