CVSA: Cargo Securement to Be Focus at Roadcheck

This story appears in the May 27 print edition of Transport Topics.

Cargo securement will be a key focus of this year’s Roadcheck safety event, scheduled June 4-6 throughout North America, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance said.

CVSA estimates law enforcement agencies across North America will conduct as many as 80,000 inspections on trucks and buses during the annual event, now in its 26th year.

Roadcheck is designed to be a safety enforcement blitz that increases the visibility and awareness of commercial vehicle safety and the roadside inspection process, said Steve Keppler, executive director of CVSA, which organizes the event.

“Probably, the amount of inspections done on these three days is about three times what’s normal throughout the rest of the year,” Keppler said. “It’s a pretty big mobilization effort.”

Keppler estimated that 9,000 to 10,000 inspectors will be stationed at 1,500 to 2,000 weigh stations and other sites in the United States, Canada and Mexico. They mostly will perform CVSA’s Level I inspection — the most comprehensive checks of vehicles and drivers.

Level I inspections evaluate the driver as well as the vehicle. In addition to checking obvious things such as driver’s license, medical examiner’s certificate, hours of service, seat belt, brake system and windshield wipers, authorities also check coupling devices, exhaust system, fuel system, turn signals, head and brake lamps, steering mechanism, suspension, open-top trailer bodies, wheels and rims.

But inspectors will pay special attention to ensuring that cargo is secured properly. Updated rules from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on cargo securement — including specific standards for loads such as logs and concrete pipes — have been in effect since 2004.

“We kind of want to see how things are working out there on the field,” Keppler said of the cargo securement rules.

Cargo that is not properly secured can be extremely dangerous, he said.

“There’s not a lot of crashes that are related to cargo securement, but when they happen they tend to be catastrophic,” Keppler said.

CVSA will hold a Roadcheck media event to demonstrate the inspection process June 4 at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., near Washington, D.C. The next day, the group will conduct a similar event near Toronto, marking the first Roadcheck press conference in Canada, Keppler said.

CVSA also is encouraging police agencies and officers who do not usually perform truck or bus inspections — and are not trained to do so — to keep an eye out for unsafe commercial vehicles and unsafe driving.

“There’s only about 13,000 CVSA-certified inspectors in North America, and there’s about 800,000 law enforcement officers,” Keppler said.

Officers also will focus on enforcing laws for buses. They are prohibited by federal law from inspecting buses on their routes and instead can only pull them over for visible safety concerns.

“We’re also trying to bring awareness to the fact that there’s this restriction in law, and we need the opportunity to stop buses roadside,” Keppler said.

American Trucking Associations welcomes the annual Roadcheck event and CVSA’s efforts to improve highway safety, said Sean McNally, the group’s spokesman.

“What CVSA does at roadside, particularly during Roadcheck, is an important component of keeping our industry and our highways safe,” McNally said. “We’re especially pleased to see their emphasis this year on traffic enforcement, which is one of the tools at their disposal that we know can lead to tremendous improvements in safety and reductions in crashes.”

Phil Byrd, president of Bulldog Hiway Express and ATA’s first vice chairman, recently urged CVSA to decrease its focus on roadside inspections and instead to invest more resources in traffic enforcement and driver behavior. Driver error and unsafe behaviors account for about 90% of crashes, Byrd said at a recent CVSA meeting.

During last year’s Roadcheck, 95.4% of drivers passed, the second-highest rate on record. Similarly, 79.1% of vehicle inspections were successful, which also was the second-highest rate.

Inspectors performed 74,072 truck and bus inspections during the 2012 event. Of those, 48,815 were Level I inspections.