Senior Partner
Commercial vehicle inspectors ordered almost 12,000 semi-tractor trailers out of service between June 5 and June 7 during the annual International Roadcheck safety initiative organized by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and taking place in New York and across North America. Inspectors also removed 2,664 drivers from duty during the 72-hour safety blitz according to figures released by the CVSA. The road safety advocacy group says that almost three out of four of the trucks issued out-of-service orders were pulled off the roads following grueling Level I inspections.
Commercial vehicle inspectors were asked to pay particular attention to hours-of-service logs, as fatigue was the major focus of this year’s International Roadcheck event. These violations emerged as the most common reason for drivers being ordered off duty, but they were only discovered by inspectors about 2 percent of the time according to the CVSA.
Commercial vehicles were most often placed out of service due to poorly maintained or damaged braking systems, problems with the way their brakes were adjusted and issues with their wheels and tires. However, the results of the safety blitz suggest that trucks and truck drivers may be taking safety issues more seriously. The number of drivers and vehicles ordered out of service during International Roadcheck was down slightly in 2018 despite an increase in the number of inspections.
There are situations where experienced personal injury attorneys may also seek to have commercial vehicles inspected. Inspections could uncover defective parts, substandard repairs or neglected safety systems, and the information stored on tractor-trailer black boxes could reveal how fast trucks were traveling when they crashed. Attorneys could use this type of evidence to convince juries that the defendants in truck accident lawsuits failed to do all that they reasonably could to protect other road users from harm.
