The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has announced major FMCSA Safety Measurement System updates for 2025, aiming to improve fairness, accuracy, and clarity in how motor carrier safety is assessed. Below is a breakdown of what’s changing and how it affects the industry.
Reorganized Compliance Categories
To begin, FMCSA has rebranded its Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) as compliance categories. This shift reflects a broader strategy to streamline how safety issues are tracked and addressed.
One of the most notable changes involves the Unsafe Driving category, which now includes:
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Controlled Substances/Alcohol violations, formerly their own category.
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All “Operating while Out-of-Service” (OOS) violations, regardless of their original classification.
Additionally, the Vehicle Maintenance category has been split into two parts:
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Vehicle Maintenance: Covers issues usually found by mechanics during routine maintenance or during Full (Level 1) roadside inspections.
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Vehicle Maintenance: Driver Observed: Focuses on violations that drivers can reasonably detect or that arise during Walk-Around (Level 2) roadside inspections.
Meanwhile, other categories like Crash Indicator, Hours of Service, Hazardous Materials, and Driver Fitness will remain unchanged.
Streamlined Roadside Violations
FMCSA has consolidated over 2,000 individual violation codes into about 100 broader violation groups. These groups now represent similar safety behaviors. During inspections, multiple violations within the same group will count as a single infraction for prioritization—ensuring assessments remain both fair and consistent.
Simplified Severity Weights
Instead of using a 1–10 scale, FMCSA has introduced a two-tiered severity system:
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Severity Weight of 2 applies to any OOS violations (for all categories except Unsafe Driving) or to disqualifying driver violations (specific to Unsafe Driving).
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Severity Weight of 1 applies to all other violations.
This new system makes it easier to understand the relative seriousness of different safety issues.
Adjusted Intervention Thresholds
FMCSA has also revised its intervention thresholds to more accurately reflect each category’s link to crash risk:
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Vehicle Maintenance and Driver Observed Maintenance:
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80% threshold for general carriers.
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75% for passenger and hazardous materials (HM) carriers.
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Driver Fitness:
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Increased to 80% for general carriers.
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75% for passenger and HM carriers.
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HM Compliance:
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Threshold increased from 80% to 90% for all carrier types.
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Proportionate Percentiles
As part of the FMCSA Safety Measurement System updates for 2025, the agency will eliminate safety event groups and assign percentiles based solely on a carrier’s number of inspections and crashes. This change minimizes score fluctuations caused by non-safety factors and offers a more accurate picture of performance trends.
Stronger Emphasis on Recent Violations
To ensure relevance, FMCSA will now calculate percentiles only if a carrier has received at least one roadside violation in a category within the past 12 months. This change directs attention to carriers with current safety issues.
Updated Utilization Factor
FMCSA has increased the Utilization Factor threshold from 200,000 to 250,000 Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) per average Power Unit (PU). This adjustment accounts for evolving operational norms and leads to more accurate safety metrics.
Expanded Segmentation
Segmentation has now been applied to additional categories to allow for more precise comparisons between carriers:
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HM Compliance is segmented by Cargo Tank and Non-Cargo Tank carriers.
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Driver Fitness is segmented by Straight and Combination carriers.
Fairer Crash Assessments
Lastly, FMCSA will continue to exclude crashes deemed not preventable from SMS scores. This approach ensures carriers aren’t unfairly penalized for incidents outside their control.
These enhancements mark a major step in FMCSA’s commitment to road safety, offering a clearer and more equitable framework for assessing motor carrier performance.
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