The Price of Safety
This Editorial appears in the May 25 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Some 10,000 enforcement officers plan to mix a little fiscal accountability with their safety inspections during next week’s Roadcheck campaign, and we hope that is not a bad idea.
The annual truck-and-driver inspection blitz, coordinated by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, an organization of state, provincial and federal officials, also will check whether truck owners have paid registration fees owed to the states in which they operate.
The fees are collected under the Unified Carrier Registration agreement, which replaced the Single State Registration System and was created to bring administrative sanity to the profusion of tax stickers and door decals that used to bedevil trucking.
The money, once trucking’s tribute to states for operating authority, now largely supports safety enforcement efforts.
Unfortunately, not everyone pays the fees, say both state and industry authorities. Indeed, the program is plagued by “massive” undercollection, according to the board that runs it. As a result, the fleets that pony up are carrying the weight while the deadbeats skate.
Recently, a plan to double the fees was rejected — rightly so, considering it would have punished honest fleets (see story, p. 2; click here for story).
Stronger payment enforcement is the option that will be pursued during the 72 hours of Roadcheck.
Mixing a review of fee payments with truck brakes and driver logs is not as incongruous as it may sound. As American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves argues, UCR compliance is a safety issue, as it provides resources to keep inspectors in the field. Graves said ATA “wants all carriers to pay their fair share.”
CVSA, which coordinates Roadcheck every June as a way of casting an inspection net across North America, has in particular played a significant role in bringing uniformity to safety efforts.
Growing from the seed of a compact among three western states, the organization, with trucking support and ultimately federal imprimatur, was instrumental in convincing governments at all levels to adopt a uniform code of trucking safety regulations, inspection criteria and enforcement techniques.
In that sense, one could say that the result is an outstanding example of voluntary, grassroots, government-industry cooperation — as opposed to an edict handed down from on high.
That is why we have reason to hope that CVSA’s additional duty next week will be beneficial to the greater good of the industry.
