FMCSA is busy on many fronts. The agency has an approved but not yet formally released overhaul of CSA’s Safety Measurement System (SMS), a pending rewrite of its Safety Fitness Determination (SFD) rule, and a federal contract that is reportedly aimed at rating every motor carrier. Viewed together, they look like pieces of a single answer to a long-standing problem: how should the FMCSA measure carrier safety, and what should it share with the public?

SMS Changes: Approved, Not Yet Live

FMCSA approved its revised SMS methodology in November 2024. The BASICs become “compliance categories,” approximately 1,000 violations are grouped into roughly 100 violation groups, and Vehicle Maintenance is split into two. Nearly two years later, FMCSA’s Prioritization Preview site still reads “Coming Soon” and tells carriers to keep using the current SMS until the update takes effect. The agency’s official SMS methodology document, revised in June 2026, still uses the BASICs structure. This summer, carriers also noticed CSA snapshot failed to update on time around May 15, 2026, and FMCSA had not publicly explained the delay. Despite what some websites claim, the new methodology is not in effect.

Safety Fitness Determinations Are Back

FMCSA’s 2026 regulatory agenda includes a proposed rule scheduled for November that would change how the agency determines whether a carrier is unfit to operate. It builds on a 2023 advance notice seeking input on a new SFD methodology. The need is clear. As of 2021, about 94% of the roughly 690,000 interstate freight carriers eligible for a safety rating had none.

Pressure has grown after the Supreme Court’s May 2026 decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, which carrier and broker groups say raises the stakes for carrier selection. Indeed, the Transportation Intermediaries Association has submitted a Petition for Rulemaking to the Agency urging for action on this topic. The industry response to the Montgomery decision has been acute and has prioritized the industry conversation about carrier vetting and selection, how to modify practices to address safety, and how safety ratings should be considered. That is a tall order when most carriers have no rating at all.

The Bluewire Contract

In April, DOT’s Volpe Center awarded freight data firm Bluewire a contract. Its stated scope was a predictive model to assign an “Interim Risk Rating” to unrated Mexican-domiciled carriers, aimed at fraud and cabotage. Bluewire CEO Steve Bryan has described a broader goal: a data-driven framework to “ultimately rate” every carrier under DOT authority. He told Overdrive the model could be a candidate to replace today’s safety ratings and was due to DOT at the end of September. Bryan was quoted by Overdrive extolling his goal of “no more unrated carriers.” He cautioned that any adoption would still require Congress and rulemaking. DOT and FMCSA have not publicly confirmed that broader scope or whether the model was delivered.

The FAST Act Thread

This is where the pieces connect. When the FAST Act became law in December 2015, in Sections 5221 through 5225, Congress enacted a number of provisions related to CSA reform. As a result, FMCSA pulled property carriers’ SMS percentiles from public view within hours until such time as they were able to fulfill the directives of Congress. The law bars FMCSA from publishing those percentiles and alerts until FMCSA completes reporting and certifications required under the law in response to a National Academy of Sciences study of the system’s effectiveness and other items, including an FMCSA corrective action plan that the DOT Inspector General must review and report on to Congress. The Academy recommended testing a new Item Response Theory statistical model, improving exposure data, and studying whether percentiles should be public at all. FMCSA chose not to adopt this methodology.

FMCSA’s CSA Preview site states that, under FAST Act’s Section 5223, property carrier percentiles and alerts will remain unavailable to the public. FMCSA has also told Congress that Section 5223 bars it from using alerts or relative percentiles in fitness determinations, which is why its earlier SFD proposal relied on absolute measures. It remains unclear whether the Inspector General’s review has cleared the way for percentiles to return.

Crash Preventability and DataQs: Fixing the Inputs

Two quieter changes fit the same pattern. In the FAST Act, Congress also told FMCSA to deal with how preventable crashes are treated in SMS. Section 5225 directed the agency to have its Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee review the issue and recommend a process for carriers and drivers to request preventability determinations. FMCSA began a crash preventability demonstration program in 2017, made it permanent in 2020, and in December 2024 expanded the program to 21 eligible crash types. Crashes found Not Preventable are removed from the Crash Indicator calculation, though they remain publicly listed.

Perhaps in preparation for a new safety rating system, FMCSA has also been working on data quality. DataQs, the system carriers and drivers use to challenge inspection and crash records, was overhauled this year. In April, FMCSA announced that states receiving MCSAP funding must use a three-stage independent review process, meet set deadlines, and explain denials in writing. The issuing officer can no longer be the sole decision-maker when a correction is denied. The revised requirements took effect in September. FMCSA presented the DataQs update as part of DOT’s Pro-Trucker Package rather than as a FAST Act requirement, but it addresses the same concern that drove the 2015 law: the data feeding SMS must be accurate and fair before it is used to judge carriers.

Our Take

FMCSA has not said it is packaging these efforts together. But Congress seemingly has already directed the Agency to link them. Percentiles cannot return to public view until the FAST Act conditions are met, and they cannot drive fitness determinations. Meanwhile, FMCSA has been working to shore up the inputs through Motus, crash preventability and DataQs actions that any broader rating approach would need to withstand scrutiny. A model built on absolute measures that covers every carrier could sidestep both limits while answering the industry’s complaint about unrated carriers. In our view, it would not be surprising if the long-delayed SMS rollout ultimately arrives alongside a new SFD rule and a broader rating approach, rather than on its own.