BASIC measures

Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories. The seven categories FMCSA uses to organize motor carrier safety data: Unsafe Driving, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances/Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Crash Indicator.

Why it matters

Each BASIC is independently scored, percentile-ranked against peer carriers, and surfaced to enforcement, shippers, brokers, insurers, and procurement. A carrier reading high in any single BASIC takes the consequences across all those surfaces at once. Reading low (good) across multiple BASICs unlocks freight access that high-percentile carriers are structurally locked out of.

Where it appears in a ProHRHQ carrier page

The Safety record — peer-cohort analysis table on a ProHRHQ carrier page shows each BASIC's three-year weighted score, the peer cohort average, and the carrier's position against the cohort. Acute and critical violation flags are surfaced alongside each BASIC.

The seven categories and the intervention thresholds

The seven BASICs are Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator, Hours-of-Service Compliance, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances and Alcohol, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Driver Fitness. Each one uses the past 24 months of inspections, violations or crashes, weighted by severity and by how recent they are, and ranks the carrier as a percentile against carriers with a similar amount of activity. FMCSA prioritises carriers for intervention above set thresholds: 65 percent for Unsafe Driving, Crash Indicator and Hours-of-Service for most property carriers, and 80 percent for the other four, with lower thresholds for passenger and hazmat carriers. Two percentiles, Crash Indicator and Hazardous Materials Compliance, are not displayed publicly. A carrier also needs a minimum amount of inspection or crash activity before a percentile is calculated at all, which is why many small fleets show no percentile.

Related terms

• FMCSA SMS
• Peer-cohort grading
• Unsafe Driving
• Hours-of-Service Compliance
• Driver Fitness
• Vehicle Maintenance

BASIC scores are public and refresh monthly. The authoritative federal source is the FMCSA SMS website.