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FMCSA violation data: what the scores mean

This page names no carriers, and the reason is printed on the data itself. The agency that publishes these records tells readers not to draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety from them. It also notes that the crashes listed against a carrier include crashes that were not its fault. Both facts survive being quoted.

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By Michael Mangione, Legal Research Editor Last reviewed August 1, 2026 17 min read
Carriers named here
None
The agency instructs readers not to draw that conclusion.
The crash count
No fault
It counts involvement, regardless of whose fault it was.
The window
24 months
Rolling. Older events drop out whether or not anything changed.
The scale
Zero is best
Counterintuitive, and routinely read backwards.

Key takeaways

  • The publisher disclaims the obvious use. Every carrier record carries an instruction not to conclude anything about overall safety from it.
  • Crash counts include crashes the carrier did not cause. The field records involvement, not responsibility.
  • The percentiles are relative. A carrier is placed against a peer group, so a high figure means worse than similar carriers, not unsafe.
  • It is still worth pulling. As a starting point for questions, not as a verdict. Section five covers what it is genuinely good for.
Editorial content, not legal advice

This guide is written and reviewed by our editorial team to be accurate and current. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. This page deliberately names no motor carrier and publishes no ranking of carriers, for the reasons set out in sections one and two. Nothing here indicates whether any claim has merit or what it might be worth, and a carrier's public record is not a finding about any particular crash. We are a referral service and are paid by attorneys.

01 Why no carrier is named on this page

Quick answer

Because the agency publishing the data says in terms that readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition from it, and a table of most-cited carriers is precisely that conclusion set out in rows.

There is a second reason, and it is practical rather than principled. Naming companies as the worst offenders is a factual assertion about identifiable businesses, and a mistake there is not a rounding error.

What this page does instead is explain how to read a record you have already pulled. Anybody searching for fmcsa violations by carrier can look up any operator in about two minutes, and our guide to commercial truck accident claims covers where a carrier's record fits into a case.

Bottom line: the data is public and worth pulling. The ranking is the part that does not survive scrutiny.

02 What the agency says about its own data

Quick answer

It appears on every carrier record in the system, and almost nobody quoting a carrier's scores quotes it too. Two sentences, and they change how the whole thing should be read.

The publisher, on its own system
Readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition
FMCSA, Safety Measurement System, use of SMS data notice

The notice states: Readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition simply based on the data displayed in this system. Unless a motor carrier has received an UNSATISFACTORY safety rating under part 385 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, or has otherwise been ordered to discontinue operations by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, it is authorized to operate on the Nation's roadways. It adds that The data in the Safety Measurement System (SMS) is performance data used by the Agency and Enforcement Community and that a symbol indicating the agency may prioritize a carrier for further monitoring is not intended to imply any federal safety rating of the carrier pursuant to 49 USC 31144. Read the notice

Read that carefully. The data is described as a tool for the agency and enforcement, a prioritization aid rather than a rating. And a carrier appearing badly in it is, unless separately rated unsatisfactory or ordered to stop, lawfully operating.

A National Academies review of the program led the agency to acknowledge, in a 2017 Federal Register notice, that it had been unable to quantify the effects of publishing these percentiles at all, and to accept a recommendation that it study whether the public scores are usable in the way people use them. That question was open then and the agency has since proposed a new prioritization methodology.

03 The crash count does not mean what you think

Quick answer

This is the most consequential line on the page for anybody who has been hurt. The crashes listed against a carrier count its involvement in reportable crashes, and the field takes no view at all on whose fault they were.

The same system, on its crash display
Regardless of the carrier's or driver's role in the crash
FMCSA, Safety Measurement System, note accompanying carrier crash data

The note reads: Crashes listed represent a motor carrier's involvement in reportable crashes, regardless of the carrier's or driver's role in the crash. A carrier struck from behind while stationary appears in that count exactly as a carrier whose driver caused a fatal collision does. The number is a count of events a carrier was present at, not a record of harm it did.

Which means a large crash figure can be produced by operating a lot of vehicles in heavy traffic, and a firm quoting one at you as evidence of a carrier's character is quoting a field that does not carry that information.

The crash count field

What it records

That the carrier was involved in a crash meeting the federal reporting threshold, within the current window. Nothing more.

What it is read as

A tally of crashes the carrier caused. It is not that, and the system says so directly beneath the figure.

04 Percentiles are relative, not absolute

Quick answer

A carrier is not scored against a standard. It is placed against a group of broadly comparable carriers, so a poor position means worse than its peers on that measure, in that window, on the inspections that happened to occur.

Three features of the method are worth holding on to, and each of them is stated by the system itself.

The behavior category measures

What they are

A measure built from 24 months of inspection and crash data, with violations and crashes weighted by time and severity. On the displayed measure, zero indicates the best performance.

What they are not

A running total. Events drop out of the window as they age, so a figure can improve because time passed rather than because anything changed.

The size adjustment

What it does

The system normalizes the unsafe driving and crash indicator categories by carrier size, so a large operator is not penalized simply for running more vehicles.

What it does not fix

Inspection exposure. A carrier stopped more often generates more data, and a carrier rarely inspected can look clean because little was ever recorded.

Anybody comparing fmcsa violations by carrier across two operators is comparing two records shaped by how often each was inspected, which is not a property of either carrier's driving.

05 What the record is genuinely good for

Quick answer

Generating questions. It tells you what has been inspected, what was found, whether the agency has investigated, and where to look next. That is real value, and it is different from a verdict.

The public record is free and takes minutes, and our guide to the federal rulebook explains which parts of it a violation actually engages.

  • Patterns are more interesting than totals. The same violation type recurring across inspections says more than a headline count does.
  • Investigation history matters. Whether the agency has looked at this carrier, and what it found, is a different order of information from roadside data.
  • Out-of-service outcomes are concrete. A vehicle or driver ordered off the road at the roadside is a finding, not a percentile.
  • Nothing there is evidence about your crash. It is background that tells a lawyer what to ask for in discovery.

06 What a violation history is worth in a claim

Quick answer

Less on its own than most people expect, and more as a map. A record of prior violations does not establish that a carrier was negligent on the day, and whether any of it reaches a jury is a question of admissibility that varies.

The honest description is that it shapes the investigation rather than proving the case.

  • Prior violations are not proof of this crash. A carrier with a poor record can be blameless in a particular collision, and the record does not speak to it.
  • Admissibility is a separate fight. Whether prior conduct comes before a jury depends on what it is offered to prove and on the rules where the case sits.
  • It points at the documents that matter. Maintenance findings suggest which records to demand; hours violations suggest which logs to preserve.
  • Nobody should be valuing a case from it. Our national statistics page makes the same point about population data.

A firm that opens by showing you a carrier's public scorecard is doing something easy. The harder and more useful work is getting the carrier's own records, which are not public and have to be demanded before they age out.

07 Red flags

Quick answer

A crash count presented as fault, a percentile described as a safety rating, a most-cited list credited to the agency, and any of it used to suggest what a claim is worth.

Each is checkable against text the system prints beside the numbers.

How carrier records get misused

Crash count offered as blame. The field counts involvement regardless of role, and says so. A percentile called a safety rating. The system states the opposite: it is not intended to imply any federal safety rating. A ranked list credited to the agency. The agency instructs readers not to draw overall safety conclusions from this data, which is what a ranking does. A clean record treated as a clearance. A rarely inspected carrier generates little data, and little data is not a good record. Scores attached to case value. Nothing in a carrier's public file says anything about what a particular claim is worth.

A closing word on what this page will not do. The obvious version of it lists companies with numbers beside them, which is what most people arriving here expect to find. We have not written that, because the agency publishing the data says plainly that readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety from it, and building a league table out of fmcsa violations by carrier is exactly that conclusion in table form. What the record genuinely supports is in sections five and six. Our guide to the rest of this research section applies the same standard elsewhere.

How we vet every lawyer

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  • Active, discipline-free license

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  • Goes after the carrier's own records

    Rather than presenting a public scorecard, which takes two minutes and proves nothing about your crash.

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Tell us what happened and we will only match you when a case genuinely fits.

Help in all 50 states

MVA Lawyer Network is a nationwide guide. Wherever it happened, we can connect you with an independent attorney licensed in that state.

Northeast Southeast Midwest Southwest West Coast Mountain West Gulf States Alaska and Hawaii

The federal record described here is national and is the same wherever a crash happened. What changes by state, and what actually decides a case, is different: whether prior conduct is admissible and for what purpose, how fault is apportioned and whether a share of blame reduces or bars a recovery, how long you have to bring a claim, whether damages are capped, what happens when evidence is destroyed, and who may bring a claim for somebody killed. A carrier's public safety record speaks to none of that and says nothing about whether any claim has merit or what it might be worth. The deadline for bringing a claim, known as the statute of limitations, is running now.

Sources, and the list we did not build

One system, quoted from its own notices, and a federal register notice about whether its scores work.

The Safety Measurement System, on itself

  • Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Safety Measurement System, use of SMS data notice, displayed on carrier records and on the CSA website. Source of the instruction that readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition simply based on the data displayed in the system; of the statement that unless a carrier has received an unsatisfactory safety rating under 49 C.F.R. part 385 or been ordered to discontinue operations it is authorized to operate; of the description of the data as performance data used by the agency and the enforcement community; and of the statement that the prioritization symbol is not intended to imply any federal safety rating pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 31144. FMCSA CSA.
  • The same system, carrier crash and methodology displays. Source of the note that crashes listed represent a carrier's involvement in reportable crashes regardless of the carrier's or driver's role in the crash; that performance in each behavior category is based on 24 months of inspection and crash data; that violations and crashes are weighted by time and severity; that zero indicates the best performance on the displayed measure; and that the unsafe driving and crash indicator categories are normalized by carrier size to account for exposure.
  • Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Federal Register notice of 28 August 2017, responding to the National Academies of Sciences review of the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program. Source of the recommendation that the agency study the statistical operating characteristics of the percentile ranks to support decisions about the usability of public scores, and of the agency's response that it had been unable to quantify the impacts of publicly displaying those percentiles.

The list we did not build. This page names no motor carrier. The decision rests on the first source above rather than on caution: the agency publishing the data instructs readers not to draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition from it, and a table of most-cited carriers is that conclusion arranged in rows. There is a second reason worth stating plainly, which is that publishing companies as worst offenders is an assertion about identifiable businesses and an error there is a different kind of problem from a misquoted percentage.

Why the crash note leads section three. Of everything the system prints about itself, the statement that crashes are counted regardless of the carrier's or driver's role is the most useful to somebody who has been hurt and the least often repeated. It means a carrier's crash figure cannot be read as a measure of harm caused, and anybody offering it that way has not read the line printed beneath it.

What this page does not cover, deliberately. How to look a carrier up, what the behavior categories are called, and which of them are publicly visible for freight as against passenger carriers are all set out on our semi truck accident lawyer guide, together with the statutory reason two categories are hidden. Repeating that here would duplicate it and risk the two accounts drifting apart, so this page assumes you have the record in front of you and explains what it means.

Our editorial standards

How we keep this guide accurate and worth trusting.

01

We name no carriers

The agency publishing the data tells readers not to use it that way.

02

We print the note nobody quotes

Crashes are counted regardless of whose fault they were.

03

We do not repeat a sibling page

The lookup walkthrough exists already and is linked rather than rebuilt.

04

We say what the record cannot do

It shapes an investigation. It does not prove a case or value one.

Michael Mangione, Legal Research Editor
Michael Mangione Verified editor
Legal Research Editor · Founder, The Mangione Group, Inc.

MVA Lawyer Network is edited by Michael Mangione, who has spent more than twelve years working inside contingency-based law firms, building intake departments, designing qualification frameworks, and studying how claims are screened and pursued from the first call through resolution. A carrier's public scorecard is the easiest thing in this field to put in front of a client and among the least informative about their actual case.

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Common questions, answered

General information, not legal advice. A carrier's public record is not a finding about any particular crash.

Which carriers have the most violations?

We do not publish that, and the reason comes from the agency rather than from us. Every carrier record in the system carries an instruction that readers should not draw conclusions about a carrier's overall safety condition from the data displayed. A ranked list is that conclusion in table form. You can look up any individual carrier yourself in a couple of minutes, which is a different and perfectly legitimate use of the same records.

Does a high crash count mean the carrier is dangerous?

Not by itself, and this is the single most misread field in the system. The note printed with the data states that crashes listed represent the carrier's involvement in reportable crashes regardless of the carrier's or driver's role in the crash. A carrier rear-ended while stopped appears in that count identically to one whose driver caused a fatal collision. It counts presence at events, not harm caused.

Is a bad score a federal safety rating?

No, and the system says so explicitly: the symbol indicating the agency may prioritize a carrier for further monitoring is not intended to imply any federal safety rating pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 31144. Safety ratings are a separate process under 49 C.F.R. part 385. Unless a carrier has been rated unsatisfactory or ordered to stop operating, it is authorized to be on the road whatever its measures look like.

Why can a carrier's numbers improve without anything changing?

Because the measures use a rolling 24-month window of inspection and crash data, with events weighted by time and severity. An event drops out once it ages past the window, so a figure can fall simply because time has passed. That is a feature of the method rather than a fault in it, but it does mean a snapshot describes a moving picture and two snapshots taken months apart are not directly comparable.

Does a clean record mean a safe carrier?

Not necessarily, and this is the mirror of the previous trap. The measures are built from inspections that actually happened. A carrier stopped frequently generates a lot of data; one rarely inspected generates little, and little data can look like a good record. The system does normalize some categories by carrier size to account for exposure, but that adjusts for fleet size rather than for how often anybody looked.

Will a carrier's violation history help my case?

It is more useful for directing an investigation than for proving one. Prior violations do not establish that a carrier was negligent in your crash, and whether prior conduct is admissible at all depends on what it is offered to prove and on the rules where the case sits. What it does well is indicate which records to demand: maintenance findings point at maintenance files, hours violations at logs.

Where do I look a specific carrier up?

Our semi truck accident lawyer guide walks through it step by step, including where to find the carrier's USDOT number and which categories are publicly visible for freight as opposed to passenger operators. We have deliberately not repeated that walkthrough here, both to avoid duplicating it and to stop the two accounts drifting apart over time. This page assumes you already have the record open.

Do I have to pay anything up front?

Injury firms generally work on a contingency basis, meaning the fee is a percentage of what is recovered set out in the written agreement and there is nothing to pay up front. Case costs, meaning experts and records and filing fees, are a separate item from the fee, and the agreement should say plainly who carries them and what happens to them if the case does not succeed.

Is what I tell you private?

Yes. What you share in a case review is kept private and is used only to match you with an attorney who fits your situation. One distinction is worth understanding: true legal confidentiality, called attorney-client privilege, only attaches once you actually have an attorney-client relationship with a lawyer. Submitting a form to a referral service is not the same thing. If that matters to you, raise it directly with the attorney.

What does it cost to use MVA Lawyer Network?

Nothing. We are a free, independent referral service, not a law firm, and we do not give legal advice. Requesting a case review costs you nothing and puts you under no obligation. When a situation fits, we connect you with an independent attorney who reviews it directly, and we may be paid a referral fee by that attorney. That fee does not add anything on top of their percentage.

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