PSP Accident Reports & CSA Data Explained

If you screen CDL drivers, no two records get tangled together more often than PSP accident data and CSA scores. Recruiters routinely ask for “the driver’s CSA score,” then get confused when there isn’t one. The short version: a PSP report shows you crashes and inspections tied to a driver, while CSA scores a carrier. Get that distinction wrong and you’ll misread a crash on a PSP as a fault finding, or chase a driver “score” that doesn’t exist. Here’s exactly how the two fit together, how crashes get weighted, and what a crash on a PSP does and doesn’t tell you.

Key takeaways

• A PSP accident report is driver-level data from FMCSA: 5 years of crashes and 3 years of roadside inspections, pulled from the federal MCMIS database. It’s tied to the person.
• CSA scores are carrier-level. FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS) ranks companies across 7 BASICs — there is no public “driver CSA score.”
• A crash on a PSP is a reportable event, not a fault finding. The PSP does not say who caused it.
• Crashes and violations are weighted by severity (1–10) and recency — events in the last six months count most, and everything ages off after roughly two years in SMS.
• FMCSA’s Crash Preventability Determination Program lets a non-preventable crash be noted on the PSP so you can see it wasn’t the driver’s fault.

What “PSP accident reports” actually are

A PSP (Pre-Employment Screening Program) report is FMCSA’s federal safety file on an individual commercial driver. (“FMCSA” is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency that regulates interstate trucking.) Each report pulls from the Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) — FMCSA’s central database — and contains the driver’s most recent 5 years of DOT-recordable crashes and 3 years of roadside inspections. FMCSA refreshes that MCMIS extract for the PSP system every month, so the data is the agency’s own, not an employer’s opinion. For the full primer, see what is a PSP report.

The accident side is the part recruiters fixate on, and it’s the part most often misunderstood. So let’s be precise about what’s actually on it.

How crashes and inspections appear on a PSP

A PSP report has two halves, and the accident data lives in the crash half.

Crashes. The report lists each DOT-recordable crash from the last five years. A crash is “DOT-recordable” when it’s serious enough to be federally reported — a fatality, an injury treated away from the scene, or any vehicle towed from the scene. Each entry typically shows the crash date, location, the number of vehicles, whether there were injuries or fatalities, and whether a truck was towed. What it does not show is fault. A crash appears because it met the reporting threshold, full stop — more on that below.

Inspections. The report lists each roadside inspection from the last three years, with every violation cited, the inspection level, and whether the driver or vehicle was placed out-of-service (OOS) — meaning shut down on the spot until the problem was corrected. This is where you’ll see hours-of-service (HOS) violations, logbook errors, equipment defects, and moving violations cited during the inspection.

Two facts catch people off guard. First, a roadside violation lands on the PSP the moment the officer writes it up — even if the driver was never convicted and never paid a fine. That’s why a driver can have a clean state MVR (motor vehicle record) but a busy PSP. Second, a crash on the PSP is not evidence the driver caused it. The federal system records that a reportable crash happened and that this driver was involved. It does not adjudicate blame.

PSP (driver) vs. CSA (carrier): the core distinction

Here’s the confusion this article exists to kill. PSP is driver-level. CSA is carrier-level. They draw on overlapping raw data — the same crashes and inspections sitting in MCMIS — but they answer completely different questions.

CSA stands for Compliance, Safety, Accountability — FMCSA’s enforcement program. Its scoring engine is the Safety Measurement System (SMS), which takes all the inspections, violations, and crashes attributed to a motor carrier (identified by DOT number) and ranks that company against peers with a similar number of safety events. The output is a percentile from 0 to 100 in each of seven BASICs (Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories) — the higher the percentile, the worse the safety standing.

The seven BASICs are: Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and the Crash Indicator. Of those, the Crash Indicator and HM Compliance BASICs are not public — only the carrier (logged into its own profile) and FMCSA enforcement staff can see them.

The single most important takeaway: there is no public “driver CSA score.” CSA scores companies, not people. When someone asks you to “pull the driver’s CSA,” what they almost always need is the driver’s PSP. The driver-level safety data you can legitimately screen with is the PSP — the crashes and inspections tied to that individual. The carrier’s CSA percentiles describe the fleet, not any one seat in it.

How crashes are weighted: severity and recency

Even though there’s no driver CSA score, it’s worth understanding how SMS weights events, because the same logic shapes how you should read a PSP — recent and severe matters more than old and minor.

Severity weighting. In SMS, every violation carries a severity weight from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest crash risk and 10 is the highest, relative to other violations in that BASIC. On top of that, an extra weight is added for out-of-service violations — an OOS event counts for more than a paperwork slip. The practical lesson for reading a PSP: a brake-defect OOS is not a burned-out marker light. Count severity, not just the number of lines.

Time weighting. SMS multiplies each event by a time weight that favors recency. Violations and crashes in the last six months get a time weight of 3; those from six months to a year get a 2; older events get a 1. After roughly 24 months, events age out of the carrier’s SMS calculation entirely. Apply the same instinct to a PSP: a cluster of HOS violations last quarter is a louder signal than a single crash four years ago that’s already trending into the rear-view. For a PSP, crashes hang around for five years and inspections for three, so you’ll often see older events the SMS engine would already have dropped — weigh them accordingly.

The Crash Preventability Determination Program

This is the piece that directly addresses the “a crash isn’t fault” problem. Because a PSP lists a crash without saying who caused it, FMCSA runs the Crash Preventability Determination Program (CPDP) so a driver isn’t penalized in screening for a wreck that wasn’t their doing.

Here’s how it works. A carrier or driver submits an eligible crash for review through FMCSA’s DataQs system, attaching the police accident report and any supporting photos, video, or documents. FMCSA reviews against a defined list of crash types — the program covers 21 eligible crash types, such as the truck being struck in the rear, struck while legally stopped, or hit by a vehicle entering the road from a driveway or parking lot. If FMCSA determines the crash was not preventable, two things happen: it’s excluded from the carrier’s Crash Indicator BASIC in SMS, and — the part that matters for you — the not-preventable determination is noted on the driver’s PSP report.

So when you read a PSP, look for that notation. A crash flagged not-preventable is the federal government telling you, on the record, that the driver didn’t cause it. A crash with no determination simply hasn’t been reviewed — it is not an admission of fault. Treat an unmarked crash as “happened, cause unknown,” not “the driver’s fault.” This is exactly the kind of nuance that separates a careful screener from one who rejects a good driver over a rear-end collision someone else caused. (For the consent and dispute mechanics around PSP, see PSP report cost, consent, and dispute.)

What this data shows you — and what it can’t

Put it together and the picture is clear. A PSP accident report is the best federal record you can pull on an individual driver’s crashes and inspections. CSA scores tell you about the carrier a driver came from — sometimes useful context, but never a substitute for the driver’s own PSP, and never a “driver score.” Both are built from reportable safety events, and neither one assigns fault unless the CPDP has weighed in.

That’s also the honest limit. PSP and CSA data capture reportable safety events — crashes serious enough to be federally recorded and violations cited at roadside. They are silent on the behavior that sinks most bad hires: the no-shows at orientation, the dispatcher ghosting, the abandoned truck left hundreds of miles from the yard after a pay dispute. None of that is a federal safety event, so none of it touches a PSP or moves a CSA number. A driver can have a clean PSP, a clean MVR, and a former carrier with decent CSA scores — and still be the most unreliable hire you make this year.

That behavioral history lives only with the recruiters and dispatchers who dealt with the driver before you. A peer-sourced peer driver-review database like cdlscan.com is built to surface it: you search a driver by name and read what past carriers said about showing up, finishing loads, and being worth rehiring. Search is free; a full report runs from $2.75 (CDLScan lists more than 1 million reviews and runs around 23,419 searches a week). It doesn’t replace your PSP, MVR, or Clearinghouse checks — it adds the reputation layer they miss, alongside the safety data, never instead of it. The smart play is both: pull the PSP for the federal safety record, then check the peer reviews for the behavior the safety record can’t see. For how the federal records stack up against each other, see PSP vs. DAC vs. MVR and our guide to the MVR check for CDL drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is a PSP accident report? It’s the crash portion of a driver’s FMCSA Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) report: the most recent five years of DOT-recordable crashes pulled from the federal MCMIS database, tied to the individual driver. It records that a reportable crash happened and that this driver was involved — it does not say who was at fault.

Is a CSA score the same as a PSP report? No. A PSP report is driver-level crash and inspection data. CSA scores are carrier-level percentile rankings produced by FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS). They draw on the same raw MCMIS data but answer different questions: PSP is about the driver, CSA is about the company.

Can I look up a driver’s CSA score? No. There is no public driver CSA score. CSA/SMS scores motor carriers by DOT number, not individuals. The driver-level safety data you can legitimately screen with is the PSP report. If someone asks for a driver’s “CSA,” they almost always mean the PSP.

Does a crash on a PSP mean the driver was at fault? No. A crash appears on the PSP because it met the DOT-recordable threshold, regardless of who caused it. The PSP does not assign fault. The only fault-related signal is a “not preventable” notation from FMCSA’s Crash Preventability Determination Program.

What are the 7 BASICs in CSA? Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and the Crash Indicator. Five are public; the Crash Indicator and HM Compliance BASICs are visible only to the carrier and FMCSA enforcement staff.

How are crashes and violations weighted? By severity and recency. SMS gives each violation a severity weight from 1 to 10 (with extra weight for out-of-service events) and a time weight that counts the last six months three times, six-to-twelve months twice, and older events once. Events age out of SMS after about 24 months.

What is the Crash Preventability Determination Program? An FMCSA program that lets carriers and drivers submit eligible crashes — 21 defined crash types — through DataQs for a preventability review. If FMCSA finds a crash not preventable, it’s removed from the carrier’s Crash Indicator BASIC and noted as not-preventable on the driver’s PSP report.

Do PSP or CSA data show no-shows or abandoned trucks? No. Both capture reportable safety events — crashes and roadside violations — not workplace behavior. No-shows, mid-load ghosting, and abandoned trucks never appear in federal safety data. That reputation history only surfaces through past carriers, which is what a peer driver-review check adds on top of the safety record.