Letters: CSA/CVIEW, Underride Guards, Mexico Border

CSA/CVIEW

The article titled “CSA Helps States Target Safety Reviews” in Transport Topics’ February/March 2011 iTECH supplement (p. A6) stated: “In New Mexico and 45 other states and the District of Columbia, carriers’ performance ratings and other fleet data are consolidated in the Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks database.

The information can be shared across jurisdictions and examined in the Commercial Vehicle Information Exchange Window system. As a result of [the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program], states such as New Mexico are modifying their CVIEW systems, amending computer architecture and adding data fields to give inspectors a complete view of a carriers’ CSA status. With these changes, CVIEW now will contain more information than ever before.”

I’m all for targeted enforcement, and CSA/CVIEW will certainly help to do this. However, many motor carriers have begun to pay their drivers a bonus for “clean/no violation discovered” inspections as a proactive way to keep their CSA scores low and/or to speed up the lowering of currently elevated scores. The problem appears to be that unless a carrier has an active “alert” status, the chances of being pulled over for an inspection are practically zero, meaning that drivers have a really hard time getting their bonuses.

Here is a case in point: Last August, I delivered a new, 11-foot-wide mobile crane from Lexington, Ky., to Edmonton, Alberta. Traveling unescorted, with oversize permits, I pulled into 16 open inspection stations in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Alberta and none of them found it necessary to perform even a lowly Level 3 inspection. Mind you, the 17th station, which was in Balzac, Alberta, performed a Level 2 inspection and placed the unit out of service — allegedly for deflated airbags on the boom-dolly, but the officer refused to accept the fact that when the parking brakes are applied, the bags deflate. At between $20 and $65 per clean inspection, there went my potential bonuses.

With all due respect to the en-forcement community, I still believe they should do more random inspections, if only to keep a level playing field be-tween good motor carriers and lousy ones.

Andre Perret

Fleet Safety/Compliance Professional

The Road-Scholar

Hamilton, Ontario

Canada

Underride Guards

This is in reference to the story “Changes to Underride Guards Sought as Study Finds U.S. Standard Inadequate” (3-7, p. 5).

Once again, we look at possibly placing the responsibility for safety on trucking companies and/or trailer manufacturers in order to allow for the unsafe, reckless, inattentive driving of motorists.

We don’t build a wall around a fire; we teach our kids not to put their fingers in it. We teach them to be aware of dangers they may encounter and expect them to be held accountable for their own personal safety. Isn’t it time we stopped placing tighter safety restrictions on trucking companies so as to make allowances for the poor driving habits of the motoring public?

Every safety feature we now have on our vehicles is there to compensate for the motorist who goes too fast around a curve, runs into things and basically doesn’t have a clue as to what safe driving is anymore. The motorist doesn’t need to know about safe driving because we make the vehicle smarter than he is. It reminds me of an old safety slogan: “In the days of the horse-and-buggy, accidents were nearly nonexistent because man did not have to rely on his own intelligence.”

Now it’s even worse.

Lawrence Hartung

Director of Safety

deBoer Transportation, Inc.

Blenker, Wis.

Mexico Border

I guess Mexico finally has used enough bully tactics to get President Obama and his administration to open our highways to Mexican trucks. Even though Mexico is very unsafe, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has warned trucking companies to stay out of Mexico because of the high number of hijackings, they want to open our borders.

[Editor’s note: DHS has advised tourists to avoid entering Mexico.]

With all the new regulations coming out of Washington these days, how are American truckers supposed to compete with Mexican trucks? They want American taxpayers to pay for the Mexican trucking companies’ electronic onboard recorders.

I thought the president was all for small business, but his administration is sure doing its best to destroy small trucking companies and the drivers they employ. If you do not believe this will kill the American trucking industry, just drive through Detroit and see what happened to our automotive industry.

The problems are that:

• Mexican truckers do not follow our safety rules and regulations.

• Mexican trucks are not built to the same safety standards as U.S. trucks.

• Mexican drug lords might use these trucks to import illegal drugs.

• It will cost American jobs.

• This will kill small business because 80% of American trucking companies are owner-operator companies with one to five trucks.

Charles Guintard

WHP Enterprises

Grand Lake, La.