A driver I worked with six months ago asked me something I hear at least once a month: "My violation was cleared—why is my CSA score still higher than it should be?"
The answer isn't that the violation wasn't cleared. It's that violations don't just disappear from your scoring when they're adjudicated. They decay. And that decay happens on a schedule—a schedule that doesn't always feel fair when you're checking your score in real time.
I'm going to walk you through exactly how long violations haunt your CSA score, why the timing matters, and what you can expect over the next two years if you've just been cited.
The 3/2/1 System: How Violations Get Lighter Over Time
The FMCSA uses something called time-weighting in its Safety Management System (SMS). It's not complicated, but it's crucial to understand: violations don't carry the same penalty weight no matter when they occurred. They're heavier when they're fresh, and they get lighter the older they are.
Here's the framework: violations are weighted at 3x their base severity in the first six months, 2x in the six to twelve month period, 1x in the twelve to twenty-four month window, and then 0x (zero) after twenty-four months. That last tier is the only one that actually removes the violation's impact from your score.
Check how your violations are weighted right now in each time tier.
Think of it this way: a violation written today carries triple the punch it would carry a year from now. By the time twenty-four months pass, it's gone. But getting from today to that two-year mark? That's a long slope downward.
Why the First Six Months Hit Hardest (Weight 3)
When you first receive a violation, it goes into the 0-6 month bucket with a full weight of 3. This is the danger zone for your SMS percentile. If you have multiple violations dropping in during this period, they compound hard.
Here's what that means in practice: a single violation in the Unsafe Driving basic carries baseline severity points. But at weight 3, those points are tripled in how they affect your SMS score. That's why I tell drivers and safety managers to get serious about remediation right away—not because the violation will haunt you forever, but because the next six months are when it hurts most.
The FMCSA's SMS methodology accounts for this by using these time-weighted tiers consistently across all carriers and inspection types. 49 CFR Part 385 governs the CSA program and the way violations are scored and managed in your safety profile.
Months 6-12: The First Reprieve (Weight 2)
Around month seven, something quietly changes. Your violation slides into the 6-12 month window, and its weight drops from 3 to 2. Your CSA percentile will shift—probably not dramatically, but noticeably if that violation was dragging you down hard.
This is still substantial penalty. The violation is still pulling your score in a bad direction. But it's lighter. If you've managed to stay clean for six months, you'll see the benefit. If you got another violation during those six months, now you've got two different weights working against you—the old one at 2 and the newer one at 3.
This is where streak momentum matters. One clean month can feel meaningless when you've got a hot violation fresh on the books. But six clean months? That starts shifting things.
The Long Middle: Months 12-24 (Weight 1)
Somewhere around month twelve or thirteen, your violation crosses into the 12-24 month window, and the weight drops to 1. Now you're getting somewhere. The violation is still there, still counts, still affects your SMS percentile—but it's carrying only a fraction of the weight it did when it was fresh.
This is the long tail. It's the reason people think violations "disappear" when they don't. The violation is still in your record. It's still being counted. But by this point, if you've stayed clean, you can see real progress in your overall score.
Learn the full breakdown of how SMS scoring works and where your vulnerabilities are.
The Finish Line: Beyond 24 Months (Weight 0)
After twenty-four months—just past the two-year mark—your violation finally exits the scoring window entirely. Its weight becomes 0. It's gone from your SMS calculation.
That's it. Two years from the date written, not from the date you paid it or the date it was adjudicated. From the violation date itself.
This is why carriers who've been running lean for two years see such a jump in their SMS percentiles. It's not that anything changed with their recent behavior. It's that the old stuff finally stopped counting.
What This Means for Your Next Move
If you just got dinged by a violation, you've got a two-year timeline to work with. Your worst period is right now. Your best period is anywhere after month twenty-four. The goal in the middle is to stay clean and let that weight decay do its work.
The FMCSA isn't being punitive by keeping violations in your score for two years. It's trying to capture a pattern of behavior. One violation doesn't make a carrier unsafe. But a pattern of violations over two years—especially fresh ones—does indicate something systemic that needs fixing.
Your job is to fix whatever caused that violation and stay disciplined through the decay window.