For 72 hours from June Third to June
Fifth earlier this year, the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), in conjunction with
the Commercial Vehicle Safety
Alliance (CVSA), stopped and inspected more than 73,000 trucks
and buses at about 2,500 locations across the country, as well as
Mexico and Canada. The safety event, known as Roadcheck, is now in
its 27th year. The results of the inspections overall
showed improvement over recent years, but the sheer amount of safety
violations uncovered leaves no doubt that we still have a long way to
go to improve road safety within the trucking industry.
Roadcheck 2014 inspected trucks as well
as drivers. Of the 73,475 vehicles inspected, 18.7% were pulled from
service for safety violations. That's 13,740 trucks, or about one in
every five vehicles inspected. Of course, Roadcheck was able to
inspect only a fraction of the more than two million semi-trucks and
tractor-trailers registered in the U.S.
The biggest issues requiring trucks to
be placed out of service were brake system issues, brake adjustment
violations, and tire/wheel violations. These three areas, each of
which can lead to catastrophic truck accidents and serious personal
injury to others involved in a truck crash, accounted for 61% of the
out-of-service violations.
Of the drivers inspected, 4.8% of
truckers (about one in 20) were tagged with out-of-service violations
of their own. Nearly half of those violations were for violating
FMCSA rules regarding maximum hours of service for drivers, which
currently allow truckers to drive 11 hours in a 14-hour workday, with
workweeks that can last for six or seven consecutive days. Other
serious issues found among drivers were falsification of logbooks,
being disqualified from driving, and driving with a suspended
license.
