If you’re armed with a court adjudication of a citation that also was marked as a violation on an Illinois inspection report, and if the charge was pled down or dismissed, you should have little trouble getting that violation removed from or discounted in your record in the CSA Safety Measurement System. That’s done by using the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s DataQs system (dataqs.fmcsa.dot.gov).
Processing such requests has been pretty straightforward in Illinois, says Todd Armstrong of the State Police. “I know some other states are having some issues,” he says.
The state’s Department of Transportation takes the lead on all challenges by motor carriers and drivers. If IDOT and the state police do have a problem, it’s with the volume of what he sees as totally unsupported violation challenges.
“What we’re seeing companies do is say, ‘Please remove this violation. It will impact my CSA score,’ ” without providing any documentation to justify its removal, Armstrong says.
Such practices “clog up the system for DataQs,” he says. “Our partners at IDOT have to respond to them.”
Appeals must have photos or other evidence to prove their point. “It’s like you’re going to a court of law,” Armstrong says.