Colorado Trucks Found with High Rate of Bad Brakes During Surprise Inspections

A period of unannounced roadside inspections of commercial vehicles conducted last Spring revealed a high number of semi-trucks in Colorado with brake system violations. Brakes which are out of adjustment or have worn pads, linings, drums or rotors are by far the major reason 18-wheelers are placed out of service during roadside inspections. A brake failure at a critical moment on the highway can result in a catastrophic truck crash causing serious personal injury or wrongful death to the truck accident victims.

The surprise inspections were conducted with the help of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) as part of Operation Airbrake, an ongoing brake safety program spearheaded by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA). Nationally, 7,701 tractor-trailers were inspected, with 10.1% found to have brake adjustment issues and another 8.7% found with out-of-service (OOS) violations for brake components. In Colorado, however, the inspections found 10.8% of trucks with brake adjustment problems and 13.3% with brake component issues, placing Colorado in the top ten of jurisdictions with the highest violations of the 24 jurisdictions inspected.

In addition, another 6.7% of the big rigs were placed out-of-service for other issues uncovered during the inspections, such as driver's license and registration problems.

Another aspect of Operation Airbrake is Brake Safety Week, which includes a series of pre-announced inspections. This year Brake Safety Week was held from September 7-13 and was expected to cover 30,000 commercial vehicles. Hopefully, the surprise inspections last May served as a wake-up call to the trucking industry to get their fleets in compliance with safety codes, so that the results of Brake Safety Week inspections will show an overall improvement in Colorado and across North American trucking.

Inspection Event Shows Truck Safety Still Has A Long Road to Travel

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 27^th 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.