Roadside Inspections, CSA and DataQs
Read your safety record and challenge what is wrong
What you’ll learn
32 self-paced lessons · One-time price · Certificate of completion · Access never expires
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Questions before you enroll? See our FAQ or email info@truckrules.com.
This course covers roadside inspections, your FMCSA safety record and how to challenge what is wrong in it: who inspects you and against what, the nine inspection levels, what an out-of-service order means, and the 15-day repair certification; how inspections and crashes reach SMS, how a violation is weighted over 24 months, and what the public can and cannot see; when a DataQs request is worth filing, including wrong-carrier errors and court results on tickets; the three-stage DataQs process that took effect on September 18, 2026, and its calendar-day deadlines; which crashes are reportable and how the Crash Preventability Determination Program works; and where the enhanced SMS stands as of September 2026. The state or FMCSA decides every request. The course is organized into six modules of short lessons, followed by a final quiz.
At the roadside
6 lessons
- 1Who inspects you, and against what
- 2The inspection levels in plain words
- 3What out of service means
- 4An out-of-service truck does not move
- 5The report and the 15-day certification
- 6A warning is not a clean inspection
How it reaches your record
6 lessons
- 1From the roadside to your record
- 2What SMS is, and what it is not
- 3Recent and serious counts most
- 4Clean inspections count too
- 5What the public sees, and what it does not
- 6From an alert to a letter or an investigation
When a challenge is worth filing
5 lessons
- 1What DataQs is, and who decides
- 2What a challenge can fix, and what it cannot
- 3Tickets: the court result is what counts
- 4The wrong carrier, the wrong driver, the wrong party
- 5Deciding whether to file, and building the file
The 2026 DataQs process, step by step
5 lessons
- 1What changed on September 18, 2026
- 2Three stages, three sets of reviewers
- 3The deadlines, in calendar days
- 4When the state asks you for more
- 5The burden is yours: writing a request and an appeal
Crashes and preventability
5 lessons
- 1What makes a crash reportable
- 2How the Crash Preventability Determination Program works
- 3The eligible crash types
- 4Building a preventability request
- 5What a Not Preventable finding changes
What is changing, and where carriers actually fail
5 lessons
- 1The enhanced SMS, as of September 2026
- 2Other rules in motion, as of September 2026
- 3Where carriers actually fail after an inspection or a crash
- 4The week after an inspection or a crash
- 5What you can do now
Final Quiz
Covers the whole course