What is a BASIC percentile?
Updated · TruckPro Safety Carma
The short answer
A BASIC percentile is FMCSA’s 0–100 ranking of your carrier against carriers with similar exposure in one CSA safety category. A higher percentile means worse performance than your peers. It is recalculated monthly from roughly the last 24 months of inspections and violations.
The BASICs in one minute
FMCSA’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program uses the Safety Measurement System (SMS) to sort roadside inspection, violation and crash data into seven Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs:
- Unsafe Driving
- Crash Indicator
- Hours-of-Service (HOS) Compliance
- Vehicle Maintenance
- Controlled Substances/Alcohol
- Hazardous Materials (HM) Compliance
- Driver Fitness
From violations to a measure
Each violation found at a roadside inspection is assigned to a BASIC and given a severity weight. More recent violations count more than older ones, through a time weight. SMS adds these up and normalizes them by exposure, such as the number of relevant inspections or the size of the fleet, to get a measure for that category.
From a measure to a percentile
Carriers are placed into peer groups with similar exposure. Within the group, each carrier’s measure is ranked from 0 to 100. That rank is the percentile. A 72nd percentile means the carrier’s measure is worse than about 72% of its peers in that BASIC.
A carrier only gets a percentile in a category when it has enough data there. Below the data sufficiency minimums, the category has a measure but no percentile.
Who can see your percentiles?
FMCSA publicly shows percentiles for passenger carriers. For property carriers, percentiles and alerts are hidden from the public SMS website, though the carrier can view its own by logging in to FMCSA’s portal. The underlying inspections and violations remain public.
That is why tools like TruckPro compute estimates for property carriers from FMCSA’s public SMS data. They should always be labeled as estimates.
How to read your percentile
- Compare it to the threshold, not to 50. What matters is whether you are above the intervention threshold for your carrier type.
- Look at the inspections behind it. A handful of severe violations in a small fleet can move a percentile a lot.
- Watch the trend, not one month. Time weighting means old violations fade, so a percentile can improve without new inspections.
Details: FMCSA SMS Methodology.
Frequently asked questions
Is a high BASIC percentile good or bad?
Bad. A 90th percentile means your measure is worse than about 90% of comparable carriers in that category. Lower is better.
Why do I have no percentile in a category?
FMCSA only assigns a percentile when a carrier has enough relevant inspections or violations in that category. Without enough data, the category is shown with no percentile.
How often do BASIC percentiles change?
FMCSA updates SMS results monthly. Your percentile can change even with no new inspections, because older violations lose weight over time and peer carriers’ measures change too.