Editorial: Improved Roadcheck Results

The results from the recent Roadcheck safety blitz by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance provide more evidence of the improvements the nation’s motor carriers are making in safety compliance.

CVSA reported last week that a record-tying low number of drivers were put out of service as a result of the nationwide safety sweep in early June.

The driver out-of-service rate for such things as logbook violations declined to 4.2% from 4.6% during 2012’s safety sweep. This year’s result matched the record low set in 2011.

During this year’s Roadcheck, the out-of-service rate for vehicles also declined, to 20.6% from last year’s 20.9%.

Overall, CVSA inspectors examined 73,000 vehicles during the three days of Roadcheck, some 48,000 of which were Level I inspections, the most comprehensive examination.

In Level I inspections this year, the driver out-of-service rate was 4.3%, down from 4.6% the year before. But a higher percentage of vehicles were removed from service this year, 24.1% compared with 22.4% in 2012, during Level I examinations.

Motor carriers can take pride in the improvements this year, but the results also show that we have more to do in ensuring that our trucks and truckers are in compliance with all safety rules and regulations.

In general, about half of the driver out-of-service actions resulted from violations of the hours-of-

service rule, which has been amended several times in recent years.

On the equipment side, brake violations continued to dominate the safety infractions that led to sidelining trucks. CVSA reported that about half of all truck problems involved brakes, with brake systems accounting for 30.5% of the total and brake adjustments totaling an additional 19.5%.

However, it must be remembered that safety inspections conducted as part of Roadcheck aren’t random. Rather, inspectors select the trucks they inspect, which tends to lead to higher levels of infractions since inspectors focus on trucks that appear most likely to have violations.

As Dave Osiecki, senior vice president for policy and regulatory affairs for American Trucking Associations, put it, evaluating Roadcheck results are “tough” because the inspections “are not conducted randomly.”

But there’s little doubt that year-to-year improvements in out-of-service rates are definitely good for all involved. Let’s hope we see some new low record out-of-service rates next year.