Standardizing Inspections Broke Down State Barriers
In most states, state police conduct roadside inspections of trucks. In others, trucking safety is the responsibility of the state Department of Transportation or Public Service Commission. There are even some states where truckers must obey four separate agencies of safety enforcers.
Despite all the cooks in the kitchen, the safety enforcement broth is remarkably consistent no matter where you find it. Uniformity, which didn’t really exist before the 1980s, is a product of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, an association whose primary members are trucking officials from the state, federal and provincial levels in the United States, Canada and Mexico, with trucking representatives playing a role as well. CVSA got its start in the West where several states collaborated to make inspections identical across the board.
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Nationwide, an estimated 7,000 enforcement officers operate with funding support from the federal government’s Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program and their own states. Their duties include administering state and federal laws on commercial vehicles, roadside inspections and company compliance reviews. Some also oversee the taxes, fees and permits required of motor carriers.
Inspectors performed close to 2 million truck inspections and another 134,000 hazardous materials inspections in1998, the last year for which complete statistics are available. In addition, inspectors looked at more than 32,000 buses.
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