Last updated on March 8th, 2023 at 08:27 am

What are the Violations?

Traffic and hours of service violations are categorized into two main parts; Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement (BASIC), and Acute and Critical hours of service violations. For a non-exempt driver, the use of ELD is mandatory. If found without it, when required, they can be placed out-of-service for 10 consecutive duty hours or more. Drivers can also be placed out-of-service if found guilty of the use of unauthorized ELD or falsified logs.

Traffic and hours of service violation fines can range from $1000 to $10,000. Apart from penalties, violating the safety of hours-of-service rules can also negatively impact your CSA scores, which lead to an increased number of roadside inspections, and lowers your chances of getting best-paying loads, in turn, disrupting your business opportunities.

The FMCSA mandate and its transportation regulations

Road safety is a major concern, and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is responsible for keeping the roadways safe and reduce crashes, injuries, and other road accidents caused due to negligence of drivers by ensuring adherence to its regulations and eld mandate. The use of eld to record data related to duty status of drivers, tracking HOS to conform with hos rules, tracking consecutive hours of services, and ensuring adherence to consecutive hours regulations ensures roadside safety of vehicle and driver. The FMCSA uses CSA scores to identify safety issues and crash risks for each truck. The logging device logs all data related to the safety of the truck and share it with the international organization. CSA scores are assigned to carriers and are based on the BASICs. These scores are calculated based on frequent road inspections and crash report data obtained from the Safety Measurement System (SMS. The CSA scores are updated at the end of each month and can be checked on the CSA program website.

CSA Scores and Its impact on businesses

Maintaining a good CSA score is exceptionally crucial for any transport business. These scores are presented in a percentile form, 0 being the best performance, and 100 being the worst. The FMCSA investigates carriers with a score of higher than 65%. Carriers with lower CSA scores benefit in multiple ways, such as lower insurance costs, subject to fewer audits and inspections, and a better reputation in the business field alongside driving safety. This plays a significant role in your operations, profitability, and aids in acquiring more business.

On top of dealing with the government, the higher your CSA scores relevant to driving are, the more you are going to have to pay for insurance, and trucking insurance is already very high.

High CSA scores can be improved over time, for this and also for compliance with the ELD mandate, it is essential to understand the ELD violations and penalties. As a company, below are a few points to keep in mind when attempting to lower your CSA score.

• Hire carefully: When hiring drivers for your business, hire drivers with a decent safety record as the individual driver’s report will have an impact on the inspections and crash reports.
• Vehicle Maintenance: A majority of road accidents occur due to poor vehicle maintenance such as damaged headlights, worn-out tires, and many others. According to the ELD violations, penalties linked to headlights are rewarded points between 2-6 (on a scale of 10 in the BASICs category) to the drivers; therefore, it may hurt your current CSA score. Hence, keeping the maintenance of your vehicles in check can reduce your CSA scores by a large margin.
• Invest in training programs: CSA scores can have a significant effect on your business’s profit trend; therefore, it is a good idea to invest in safety training programs that provide ongoing training and minimize the probability of road accidents on both national and international roads across the borders.

Description of Violations

To get a brief idea of violations, the roadside violations are presented by BASIC, and it is further divided into six sections; Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Drive Fitness.

All BASIC driver violations are taken into account while determining the CSA’s (Compliance, Safety, and Accountability) Safety Measurement score (SMS) as dictated by the mandate. Each BASIC violation is assigned a Violation Group Description, Violation Severity Weight, Violation in the DSMS, and a comment.

The Violation Group Description column groups each violation under a descriptive word such as Texting, Phone Call, Dangerous Driving, Speeding, and other such categories. Driver Violations are grouped based on similar attributes, and each violation within the same group is given the same severity weight.

The Violation Severity Weight is used to determine the crash risk. Crash risk defines the probability of the occurrence of a crash, as well as the post-crash consequences. These assigned weights reflect crash risks relative to violations within a BASIC and not across different sections of BASIC. The severity weights range from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest crash risk, and 10 being the highest crash risk, with respect to other violations within the same BASIC.

As mentioned earlier, ELD violations can have an impact on the driver’s CSA SMS score.

BASIC driving Violations

Unsafe Driving

Unsafe Driving is one of the frequent violations drivers face. Some of the common ones include:

Each of these violations has been assigned with a severity weight based on their group description. The highest weighted violation, 10, in the Unsafe Driving section are the ones that are described under “Phone Call” groups such as Section 177.804C mentioned above. The lowest weighted violation, 1, are the ones under the “Other Driver Violations” group.

Hours-of-Service Compliance

HoS rules and regulations are mainly to do with the number of consecutive hours completed by a driver. All commercial motor vehicle drivers much follow HoS rules. The primary purpose of introducing violations based on such an aspect is to avoid crashes due to the drowsiness of the driver.

Some of the violations in this category include:

The highest weighted violation, 10, in the Hours-of-Service Compliance section, are the ones that are defined under the “Jumping OOS/Driving Fatigued” group, such as section 392.3 mentioned above. The lowest weighted violation, 1, are the ones under the “Other Log/Form & Manner” group, such as section 395.15(g) mentioned above.

Vehicle Maintenance

As discussed earlier, vehicle maintenance is an essential criterion in avoiding road accidents. This section of the BASIC addresses FMCSA regulations on vehicle maintenance (49 CFR Parts 392, 393, and 396). For more information regarding this, you can read the Factsheet on the official website. The site also consist of details regarding the compliance rules applied to the truck making international goods deliveries.

Some of the violations in this category include:

The highest weighted violation, 10, in the Vehicle Maintenance section, are the ones that are defined under the “Towing Loaded Bus” group, such as section 392.63 mentioned above. The lowest weighted violation, 1, are the ones under the “General Securement” group, such as section 393.65(b) mentioned above.

Controlled Substances

Controlled Substances/Alcohol is one of the BASIC categories the FMCSA uses to assign a CSA score and deal with CMV drivers that are impaired due to alcohol, drugs, or misuse of other substances. This section of BASIC addresses 49 CFR Parts 382 and 392. For more information regarding this, you can read the Factsheet on their official website.

Some of the violations in this category include:

The highest weighted violation, 10, in the Controlled Substances section, are the ones that are defined under the “Drugs” group, such as section 392.4(a) mentioned above. The lowest weighted violation, 3, are the ones under the “Alcohol Possession” group, such as section 392.5(a)(3) mentioned above.

Hazardous Materials Compliance

This is another one of the BASIC categories used by the FMCSA. The violations are meant to regulate and ensure the safe transportation of hazardous material; This includes loading, unloading, leakage, and attendance. This category addresses 49 CFR Parts 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 179, and 180. For more information regarding this, you can read the Factsheet on their official website.

Some of the violations in this category include:

The highest weighted violation, 10, in the Hazardous Materials Compliance section are the ones that are defined under the “Load Securement – HM” group, such as section 177.801-TRN mentioned above. The lowest weighted violation, 1, are the ones under the “HM Route” group, such as section 397.101(b) mentioned above.

Driver Fitness

This is another one of the 7 BASIC categories used by the FMCSA to keep track of records such as medical certificates, state driving records, annual reviews, and employment applications. This category is assessed based on the driver’s physical and mental qualification; It addresses 49 CFR Parts 383 and 391. For more information regarding this, you can read the Factsheet on their official website.

Some of the violations in the category include:

The highest weighted violation, 10, in the Driver Fitness section, are the ones that are defined under the “Fraud” group, such as section 390.35B-MED mentioned above. The lowest weighted violation, 1, are the ones under the “License-related: Low” group, such as section 391.45(b) mentioned above.

Acute and Critical Violations

This section does not come under BASIC violations. BASIC violations address road violations, whereas Acute and Critical violations address discrepancies found in documents during the investigation. Unlike BASIC, these are not used to determine the CSA score, and therefore, the violations are not assigned with a violation severity weight. FMCSA regulations describe Acute violations as extremely severe, and one that requires immediate attention. On the other hand, Penalties faced due to Critical violations are an indication of poor safety control management.

You can read more about this on https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/WhatsNew/Article?articleId=101216

Some of the violations under the Acute category include:

Some of the violations under the Critical category include:

Impact of violating rules on Drivers and Truck Companies

Not adhering to the ELD mandate and other driver rules could lead to a large number of fines (up to 10,000$) and also have a significant negative impact on your businesses. Every driver must get the basic understanding of knowledge regarding the mandate and HOS rules set by the authority, the least or maximum consecutive hours, and the production of logs by the device. As mentioned earlier, violating any of the regulations is taken into account when calculating one’s CSA scores; and a driver’s individual CSA score can also impact your business. Most of the violations might seem straightforward; however, as a non-exempt driver, it’s essential to go through the official documents and carefully understand all the violations pertaining to their duty under each section.

Below are a few main points as to why failure to adhere to the ELD mandate and hours of service compliance could cost you your business:

Drivers violating the regulations can be placed out-of-service for long periods.

High CSA scores can lead to higher chances of road inspections and affect your ability to get new and better customers.

High CSA scores will result in higher insurance premiums.

Violating driving, safety, and HOS rules can end up costing you thousands of dollars.

So if you do not yet have your ELD or need a better one, you can use our great resource for the best electronic logging devices.