• Compliance with acute and critical regulations affects the outcome of a compliance review.

In part, carriers are evaluated and safety ratings assigned based on compliance or noncompliance with a series of “acute” and “critical” regulations. Other factors include vehicle and driver out-of-service rates and accident history.

• Acute regulations are those where noncompliance is so severe that immediate corrective actions by the motor carrier are required. For example, a violation of 383.37(b) by allowing or requiring an employee to drive with more than one commercial driver’s license is an acute violation. Such a violation is usually discovered through examination of the driver’s qualification file, reflecting that the carrier had knowledge of the violation. If the motor carrier did not have such knowledge or could not reasonably be expected to have such knowledge, then a violation would not be cited.
• Critical regulations are those where noncompliance relates to management and/or operational controls, and violations indicate a breakdown in those controls. For example, the basic hours-of-service limits in 395.3 and 395.5 are critical regulations.

The list of acute and critical regulations can be found in Part 385 Appendix B Section VII.

Points are assigned when the auditor finds noncompliance with acute regulations or patterns of noncompliance with critical regulations. A pattern is more than one violation; when several documents are reviewed for compliance with a particular regulation, a pattern is found when 10 percent of the documents show a violation.