Truck Inspection Blitz Begins Today

Truck and bus safety inspectors throughout North America will be on the job today through Thursday checking trucks and buses and their drivers at inspection sites along major highways.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Roadcheck 2001 is in full swing in the United States, Canada and Mexico where roving patrols will also inspect commercial vehicles traveling other highways.
The annual Roadchecks, which began in 1988, place a special focus on the year-round commercial vehicle safety and other driver safety programs aimed at saving lives on North American highways. More than 2 million roadside safety inspections, including the annual Roadchecks, are conducted each year by CVSA-trained inspectors. The number grows each year as the volume of commercial traffic increases and as more government resources are provided for commercial vehicle safety programs.
CVSA spokespeson Rita Bontz says, “The annual Roadcheck puts a special emphasis on maintaining safe trucks, and that can save lives. Inspectors will not be doing anything different than they do any other day. What makes Roadcheck different is that it lasts for 72 continuous hours.”
Bontz says truck inspectors will be doing visual inspections for truck violations that are obvious but also will be doing more Level 1 inspections, where truck inspectors check for things like faulty brakes, which she says are the leading defect that inspectors find on commercial vehicles.
During Roadcheck 2000, more than 42,000 vehicles were inspected. Of those inspections, 26.2 percent of vehicles and 5.7 percent of drivers were placed out-of-service because of serious safety violations.
When there are no violations of critical safety items, the inspector places a CVSA decal (good for 90 days) on the vehicle's windshield. This allows inspectors at other sites to choose not to inspect the vehicle, unless a visible safety defect is apparent. More than 25,000 CVSA decals were issued during Roadcheck 2000.