DOT Report on Safety of Mexican Trucks Says Out-of-Service Rates Similar to U.S.
This story appears in the Sept. 14 print edition of Transport Topics.
A review of U.S. efforts to ensure the safety of Mexican trucks crossing the border said the trucks’ out-of-service rates were similar to those of U.S. trucks, but it raised concerns about how traffic violations by Mexican drivers are reported and data on Mexican carriers are maintained.
The report, published Sept. 2 by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, found states “inconsistently report traffic convictions incurred by holders of Mexican driver’s licenses” to the federal (U.S.) database.
“Inconsistent reporting and monitoring make the system vulnerable to incomplete information or delays,” the inspector general said. “As a result, any conviction information that is not reported or delayed could result in Mexican Federal CDL holders continuing to drive in the United States after incurring a disqualifying offense.”
The report said that one of the reasons for the reporting troubles is that “current federal laws and regulations . . . do not require [U.S.] states to report convictions of Mexican Federal CDL holders” to the U.S. database.
For example, the report cited New Mexico for delaying its reports of first-quarter infractions in 2008 until the second quarter and Missouri for reporting the convictions of non-commercial drivers to the database while other states did not.
An additional weakness the in-spector general cited was that “even if states report the convictions, FMCSA may not readily match them to a Mexican Federal CDL holder because the matching is carried out manually.”
The watchdog agency said that FMCSA should implement a timely report on the quality of the data produced by state agencies and should weigh whether legislative or regulatory changes are needed to ensure “consistent reporting and matching” of Mexican conviction data.
In response, FMCSA said it concurred with all of the inspector’s recommendations and that it aimed to begin making corrections by the end of the year.
Besides its recommendations, the inspector general reviewed the safety of Mexican carriers relative to U.S. fleets. Its inspections took place “mainly at the United States-Mexico commercial zones,” and the report said out-of-service rates of the two countries were “comparable.”
In 2008, 21.2% of inspections of Mexican trucks resulted in taking the trucks out of service, compared with 21.8% of U.S. trucks. In those inspections, 1.2% of Mexican drivers were placed out of service, while 6.9% of U.S. drivers received similar penalties.
Rod Nofziger, director of government affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, told Transport Topics that the comparisons of out-of-service rates were “not valid.”
“How trucks are inspected at a port of entry is not the same as how that they are inspected in rural America. It’s a different ball game,” he said. “The assumption that a law enforcement officer, when they have a whole bunch of trucks backed up at a port of entry, is going to place trucks out-of-service in the same sort of way when they are sitting in a weigh station in the middle of Iowa is not reality.”
In its response to the IG’s report, FMCSA said that it evaluates the safety performance of Mexican drivers “in a manner identical to United States and Canadian drivers.”
OOIDA is one of several groups opposed to opening the border to longhaul Mexican trucks. Earlier this year, Congress ended a Bush-era test of longhaul, cross-border trucking. The Obama administration has said it intends to start a new program.
