Aggressive Roadcheck Inspections Lead to Bump in Citations
Commercial vehicle violation citations averaged nearly 40,000 a day, according to an Aug. 3 report from Vigillo LLC, the Portland, Oregon-based data analysis firm. Roadcheck is an annual event sponsored by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. It ran June 2-4 this year.
Vigillo looked at violations logged in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration database for its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program for the three weeks ended June 13.
During that stretch, June 2-4 were the only days where violations topped 30,000. On those three days they ranged from 36,000 to 42,000 a day.
Texas inspectors were the most vigorous during that time, writing up 60,395 violations. California, which has a larger population than Texas, was a distant second with 17,585 violations written during the three weeks. Pennsylvania was third with about 11,000 violation citations.
A strong majority of the violations written were not serious enough to reach the out-of-service level.
The Vigillo report was part of its Athena series that is released publicly to document interesting aspects of CSA data.
Load securement was the special focus for this year’s Roadcheck. The top seven securement violations found over the three-week period were:
•General securement, failing to secure vehicle equipment and prevent cargo from shifting, 979 and 946 violations, respectively
•Damaged securement systems and tiedowns, 671 violations
•Leaking, spilling or blowing cargo, 651 violations
•Insufficient tiedowns or headerboard blocking, 597 violations
•Failing to secure the load, 512 violations
•Loose or unfastened tiedowns, 459 violations
