Roadcheck 2011 Focuses Inspections on Equipment, Health of Drivers

DUMFRIES, Va. — Commercial vehicle safety inspectors conducted their annual Roadcheck event last week, a 72-hour period of concentrated inspections on highways in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

“From sunup [June 7] until sundown on [June 10], more than 70,000 inspections will be done,” Anne Ferro, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, told guests at the scale house here on Interstate 95, about 35 miles south of Washington, D.C., as the inspections began.

FMCSA co-sponsors the event with the Commercial Vehicle Safe-ty Alliance.

“Drivers will be pulled over and asked to show their record-of-duty status because rested drivers are safe drivers,” Ferro said. “They will also be asked to display their [commercial driver license] and medical examiner’s certificate. The fact is driver error is a factor in nearly nine out of 10 fatal truck crashes.”

FMCSA and CVSA planned to focus Roadcheck this year on carriers of household goods, or moving trucks.

However, several recent deadly bus accidents shifted some attention this year to passenger buses. For example, the event sponsors brought in a bus for an inspection before journalists, rather than a truck.

“CVSA remains committed to nothing short of the most aggressive commercial vehicle enforcement activities to ensure the safety of the motoring public,” said Steve Dowling, president of the group and a captain in the California Highway Patrol.

American Trucking Associations has long supported the annual Roadcheck event, and several ATA officials attended the event here.

“The most recent figures reflect that truck safety has reached record levels,” Rob Abbott, ATA’s vice president of safety policy.

Abbott said roadside inspections usually deliberately target drivers based on records of past violations or observations of current behavior.

“So while the resulting violation rates may at first appear alarming, they are instead an indicator of a system that is functioning as intended — to identify the unsafe operators and hold them accountable,” Abbott said.

Sgt. Terry Licklider of the Virginia State Police, chief inspector at the Dumfries station, said that vehicles have been getting safer in recent years, but drivers’ health issues have gotten worse.

“It doesn’t matter which level of inspection we do, we ask to see the driver’s license and his medical card, which can’t be more than two years old,” he told Transport Topics.

“My inspectors have seen rising numbers of drivers who aren’t physically fit,” Licklider said. “Most of them have high blood pressure or diabetes.”

He said drivers with medical problems on buses are taken out-of-service immediately, while “drivers pulling cargo will get a ticket, but they have a defined period of how long they can drive before passing a new physical.”

Dorothy Ritenour, technician at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, demonstrated the agency’s latest technological innovation: mobile vehicles that can read infrared light.

“It will detect nonworking or overheated brakes, leaks in the exhaust systems or overinflated, underinflated or flat tires,” Ritenour said.

An infrared camera, about 3 feet long, was set up behind her van.

“We don’t have to go to just truck stops, just anywhere that truckers have to put their brakes on,” she said. “At a typical weigh station, we’ll have 10 seconds to examine them, which is ideal.”

“The worst thing I ever found was a tractor-trailer that was running overweight at 83,000 pounds, with eight of its 10 brakes out,” Ritenour said. The truck and driver were put ‘out of service’ immediately.”

Last year, a total of 65,327 vehicles were inspected during Roadcheck, of which 48,327 were given the most comprehensive “level one” inspections.