Commercial trucking crashes have increased 52% since 2009, and fatal accidents involving large trucks have risen 30% in the past decade. About 40% of fatal truck accidents involve driver-related factors, with speeding, driver impairment and failure to yield to the right of way accounting for 30% of those crashes.1
Poor vehicle inspection and unsafe driving behavior not only puts fleet drivers and others at risk, but increases insurance rates, with a single serious traffic offense raising premiums an average of 35%.2
To reduce crashes, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in November 2021 announced it would issue warning letters for unsafe driver behaviors earlier to provide fleet carriers with additional time to intervene before it becomes a bigger problem.
High scores bring big risks
The FMCSA rates fleet carrier safety using seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs). Fleet scores are calculated on a percentage scale of 1 to 100, with higher numbers indicating poorer levels of safety.
Under the new unsafe driving behavior threshold, carriers with scores of 50% or more will receive warning letters. Prior to November 2021, warning letters were not sent until a carrier’s score was 65% or higher.3
Failing to act after receiving a warning letter is likely to result in serious consequences. Underwriters use these scores to evaluate a fleet company’s overall risk. Fleet carriers with high BASIC scores have a 65% to 93% greater likelihood of crashes than the national average.4 And consistently high scores may lead to a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) audit of a carrier’s records and can result in monetary penalties of nearly $16,000 per safety violation.5
Best practices that can help reduce unsafe driving scores
Fleet owners who receive a warning letter should take immediate action to reduce their unsafe driving score. Here are five best practices they can take to improve safety:
- Create an awareness campaign. Require managers to prioritize education and safety during check-ins with drivers. Managers should focus on high-point violations such as texting, speeding and dangerous driving in general. Individual fleet carriers should organize a centralized safety awareness campaign that incorporates face-to-face safety meetings with written refreshers on the importance of safe driving distributed to drivers.
- Leverage data. Analyzing the fleet’s BASIC scores can help pinpoint which violations have the most impact on the carrier’s overall score and identify those drivers with the most safety violations. A simple unsafe driving behavior, such as a lack of seatbelt compliance among drivers, could be having an outsized impact on the fleet’s score.
- Challenge unwarranted violations. Allow drivers to contest unfair or unwarranted traffic violations. If a ticket has been dismissed in court, be sure to access the FMCSA’s DataQs system to request the removal of the violation from the fleet’s record.
- Update vehicle counts and mileage. Fleet carriers with a USDOT number are required to update their Motor Carrier Identification Report (MCS-150) every two years or after a business change. Incorrect MCS-150 data can affect a USDOT investigation, particularly if the fleet has grown, because a larger recorded fleet size can absorb higher numbers of safety violations. Carriers should update their score if the fleet size has increased or decreased more than 20% during the reporting period.
- Incentivize clean inspections. Trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds must undergo routine and random roadside inspections. The higher number of clean inspections a fleet records, the lower the BASIC score. Offering financial incentives for clean inspections can motivate drivers to spend extra time on vehicle assessments.
Contact HUB International’s transportation experts for more information on fleet safety and proactively reducing your BASIC scores.
1 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2019, October 29, 2021.
2 Automotive Fleet, “Risky Driving Behaviors Linked to Rising Insurance Rates,” December 30, 2021.
3 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, “FMCSA Updates SMS Website, Warning Letters Sent Based on Unsafe Driving BASIC Results,” November 12, 2021.
4 Compliance Safety Accountability, The Carrier Safety Measurement System Effectiveness Test by Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, January 2014
5 Truckers News, “Amounts for violations of FMCSA regulations increased,” April 4, 2022.