How do I stop my drivers from getting driving violations?

Chapter 01

Why do my drivers’ violations count against my company?

Because the driving rules are written for the company as well as the driver. One general rule makes it the carrier’s duty to see that drivers obey every rule written for them (the carrier duty rule). Several driving rules also name the carrier directly. And every violation from a roadside inspection goes into your company’s safety scores, which most people call CSA scores. It counts even if the driver got no ticket (FMCSA’s scoring manual).

Here is how that looks in real life. Say you run seven trucks: six dry vans and one flatbed. On Monday, October 5, 2026, you log in to FMCSA’s website to look at your scores. A trucking company has to log in to see its full results (FMCSA’s scoring manual). Your Unsafe Driving category now shows a rank of 71. FMCSA calls this rank a percentile. It runs from 0 to 100 and compares you with carriers that have a similar number of inspections. The higher it is, the worse. We made up the 71 for this story.

Four roadside inspections over the summer put it there. In July, an officer saw Ivan holding his phone to his ear at a red light. He was talking to your dispatcher. In August, Luis was written up at a weigh station for driving without his seat belt. In September, Bek was stopped at 3 a.m. for going 12 mph over the limit. He was racing to make a 6 a.m. delivery your dispatcher had promised. The officer also wrote that he was too tired to drive safely. A week later, a strap on Sam’s flatbed load had worked loose. Sam had not looked at the load since he left the shipper.

FMCSA sorts these violations into seven categories (FMCSA’s scoring manual). The phone, the seat belt and the speeding go into Unsafe Driving. Bek’s tiredness goes into the hours of service category, which covers drivers who are “ill, fatigued” or break the hours rules. The loose load goes into vehicle maintenance, which includes load securement. Each violation gets a weight from 1 to 10, for how closely FMCSA links it to crashes. Owners often call these weights CSA points.

The Unsafe Driving number works in a way that hurts small fleets. FMCSA adds up the weighted violations and divides the total by the size of your fleet, adjusted for the miles you drive (FMCSA’s scoring manual). Seven trucks give it little to divide by, so each violation moves your number a lot. You get no Unsafe Driving rank at all until three of your inspections have such violations. Bek’s stop was your third. For most carriers, FMCSA flags this category when the rank reaches 65, and the hours category too. The vehicle category is flagged at 80. When a category is flagged, the company may get a warning letter, more inspections or an investigation.

None of the four violations is rare. Each one started with a habit the company could have controlled. So you take them one at a time.

Chapter 02

What rules must I set for phones, seat belts and load checks?

Write down three rules and have every driver sign them. No texting and no phone held in the hand while the truck is on the road, even at a red light. Seat belts on for everyone in the cab before the truck moves. And the load checked before the trip and within the first 50 miles. After that, it is checked at each break, or every 3 hours or 150 miles (the cargo check rule). The federal rules require all three, and they forbid the company to allow the opposite.

Start with phone use, which carries the greatest weight. In January 2012, FMCSA added texting and phone use to the scores. It gave them a 10, the top of the scale (FMCSA’s scoring manual). The same list added a separate violation for a company that allows or requires a driver to use a phone in the hand. FMCSA keeps today’s weights in a separate spreadsheet that we could not open. So take the 10 as the weight these violations were given, not a promise of today’s weight.

The rules are strict about what counts as phone use (the federal definitions). Holding the phone for a call counts. So does dialing or answering by pressing more than one button. So does reaching for the phone so far that the driver is no longer sitting belted in his seat. Texting means typing or reading text on any screen, and that includes a message on a dispatch tablet. Typing or reading directions in a navigation app is not texting. Starting or ending a call with one button is allowed too. “Driving” includes sitting at a red light or in traffic. It stops only when the truck is pulled off the road and parked where it can safely stay (the phone rule). A driver may always call the police or emergency services (the texting rule).

Ivan was on a call with your own dispatcher. That matters, because the rule says: “No motor carrier shall allow or require its drivers to use a hand-held mobile telephone while driving”. So on Monday, October 12, you change three things. Every truck gets a phone mount and a headset that answers with one button. Your dispatcher stops expecting answers from a moving truck: load details go by message, and drivers read them at the next stop. And the written rule says a driver who needs to talk pulls over first.

The seat belt rule is short and clear. No driver may drive unless he is “properly restrained by the seat belt assembly”. The carrier “shall not require or permit” him to drive without it. Anyone else riding in the cab must be belted too (the seat belt rule). Luis says he forgot to buckle up after a fuel stop. So the rule you write says the belt goes on before the truck moves, every time.

Sam’s loose strap is the third habit, and the cargo rule reaches the company as well. A carrier “may not require or permit” a driver to drive unless the load is properly spread out and secured (the cargo check rule). The driver must check the load and its straps before he drives, and again within the first 50 miles. After that, he checks whenever he changes his duty status, for example when he stops for a break. He also checks after 3 hours or 150 miles of driving, whichever comes first.

There are two exceptions. A driver does not have to open a sealed trailer he was told not to open. Nor does he have to check a load packed so that checking it is not practical. The load must still be secured. Your dry vans often run sealed, but Sam’s flatbed never does. So Sam now writes each check in his trip notes, with the time and the mile marker. The rule does not ask for a note. It just lets you see that the checks happen. How to strap a load is a subject of its own, in our guide to cargo securement.

The walk around the truck before the trip covers the equipment too. Before driving, the driver must be satisfied that the truck’s key parts work. The rule lists the brakes, steering, lights, tires, horn, wipers, mirrors, coupling, wheels and emergency equipment (the equipment rule). The defects that park a truck are explained in lamps, brakes and tires that put a truck out of service.

Chapter 03

How can dispatch and delivery times cause violations?

Through the delivery times your company promises. The rules forbid a carrier to schedule a run that can be made on time only by speeding (the scheduling rule). They also forbid a carrier to “require or permit” a tired or ill driver to drive. That covers a driver who is “so likely to become impaired” too (the fatigue rule). And your dispatcher counts as the company here. The federal definition of a motor carrier includes the employees who dispatch drivers (the federal definitions).

Bek’s night shows how it happens. The load was supposed to be ready at 6 p.m., and it was ready at 9 p.m. The receiver still expected him at 6 a.m., and nobody called to move the time. To make it, Bek had to drive all night without a real break, and faster than the posted limit. The limit that counts is the one the State posts. Trucks must obey the traffic laws of each State they drive in (the rule on State laws).

The hours rules set their own limits, such as a total of 11 hours of driving before a long break (the driving time rule). Those limits are a separate subject. The fatigue rule reaches further: it applies to a driver who is too tired, even when he still has hours left.

So on Monday, October 19, you give your dispatcher two rules. First, before booking a load, check that it can be driven at the posted limits, within the driver’s hours, with a real break. If it cannot, ask for a later time or turn the load down. Second, a driver who says he is too tired may stop without being penalized.

The second rule protects you too. Say your dispatcher threatens to take away a driver’s loads to make him drive after he said it would break a rule. The rules call that coercion, and the driver can complain to FMCSA in writing (the coercion rule).

The new rules get tested on Monday, November 16. A broker offers Bek a load that would need him to leave with only four hours of rest. Your dispatcher asks for a noon delivery instead of 7 a.m., and the broker agrees. If the broker had said no, you would have passed on the load.

Weather is the same kind of decision. The rule asks for “extreme caution” and lower speed in snow, ice, fog, rain or smoke. Then it goes further: “If conditions become sufficiently dangerous, the operation of the commercial motor vehicle shall be discontinued.” The truck may not move again until it can run safely (the bad weather rule). In plain words, when the road gets too dangerous, the truck stops.

On Thursday, December 10, freezing rain covers the road ahead of Luis. He calls in. Your dispatcher tells him to park at the next truck stop and calls the receiver to move the delivery. The load arrives a day late. Nobody gets a violation, and nobody gets hurt.

Chapter 04

How do I know it is working, and how long do old violations count?

Read every inspection report the day it comes in, and check your scores every month. Old violations fade on a fixed schedule. Each carries triple weight for its first six months, double weight until it is a year old, and single weight until it is two years old. After 24 months it drops out (FMCSA’s scoring manual). In Unsafe Driving, the number comes down mainly with time and no new violations.

Take Ivan’s phone violation from July. It counts three times until January 2027, twice until July 2027, and once until it drops out in July 2028. Clean inspections do not make it count less, because Unsafe Driving divides by the size of your fleet, not by the number of inspections. The hours and vehicle categories work differently (FMCSA’s scoring manual). There, every inspection counts, clean ones included. So when two of your trucks pass inspections with no violations in November, your hours-of-service score drops, even though Bek’s violation is still there.

Each month, you read every report for the same four habits: phone, seat belt, speed and the load. You also watch for tickets. For the driver’s CDL, texting or holding a phone in a truck is a serious traffic violation. So is speeding 15 mph or more over the limit. Bek’s 12 over was below that line. A second conviction for any serious violation within 3 years disqualifies the driver from driving trucks for 60 days. A third disqualifies him for 120 days (the disqualification rules). A driver must tell you in writing within 30 days of any traffic conviction (the notice rule). What that means for your company is in how a driver’s conviction affects your trucking company.

Some violations are simply wrong. If a ticket was wrong, read whether to fight or pay a driver’s ticket. If a report shows a violation that did not happen, you can ask to correct it through DataQs.

A pattern that is left alone can bring an investigation, and then fines. A company that breaks the driving rules can be fined up to $19,246 for each violation. A driver can be fined up to $4,812 (FMCSA’s penalty table). Those amounts come from the update of December 30, 2024, and we found no newer one as of September 22, 2026 (the 2025 update). If a fine notice ever arrives, see how to respond to an FMCSA enforcement notice.

What has changed? The driving rules themselves have not changed in years. The scoring manual has: version 3.21 added 19 violations in May 2026. Some articles say CSA scores were replaced by new “compliance categories”. As of that June 2026 manual, they were not, and the scores still run on seven categories (FMCSA’s scoring manual). One thing we could not check is the current weight of each violation, because FMCSA’s spreadsheet would not open for us.

By December, your drivers have signed the rules, your dispatcher books only loads the rules allow, and you read every report within a day. That is the whole job: the same checks, every month, for every truck. If you want a team to do that work with you, here is what we offer.