{"id":669,"date":"2020-02-21T19:16:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T19:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/?p=669"},"modified":"2020-02-21T19:57:46","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T19:57:46","slug":"roadcheck-inspectors-looking-at-all-but-focusing-on-requirements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiremaster.com\/trucking-news\/laws-and-regulations\/2020\/02\/21\/roadcheck-inspectors-looking-at-all-but-focusing-on-requirements\/669\/","title":{"rendered":"Roadcheck Inspectors Looking at All, but Focusing on Requirements"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Al Muskewitz
<\/strong> 
Truckers, have your papers ready and up to date.
 
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance\u2019s 33rd annual International Roadcheck gets underway in a couple months and this year\u2019s point of emphasis is one of the most basic elements to all of trucking.
 
The 72-hour campaign this year will be held across North America May 5-7 \u2013 the earliest ever, to escape the summer heat in some jurisdictions \u2013 and the primary focus of inspectors will be driver requirements, largely because it\u2019s the first Roadcheck since electronic logging devices went into full mandate last December.
 
While inspectors can put drivers and vehicles out-of-service for any safety issue uncovered during their roadside inspection, particular attention will be paid to things like valid CDLs, up-to-date (and available) medical certificates and accurate hours of service records, items that produced the top violations for drivers put out of service in last year\u2019s Roadcheck. It will be important not simply to have the documentation or ELD in the truck, but the driver must know where to locate it and how to properly operate it.
 
\u201cWhat I\u2019m telling people now is if you want to get ready for Roadcheck make sure your driver has everything he needs, especially in this electronic age,\u201d said Kerri Wirachowsky, the director of the CVSA\u2019s roadside inspection program. \u201cAnd know where it is and how to get it.\u201d
 
There were more than 67,000 inspections conducted during last year\u2019s Roadcheck, where the focus was on steering and suspension systems, with nearly 18 percent of vehicles and four percent of drivers placed out-of-service for critical violations. The inspections identified 1,111 OOS conditions for the focused issue. The top two driver OOS conditions related to hours of service and wrong class of license. Those passing the inspection have a CVSA decal applied to their truck.
 
International Roadcheck is the largest targeted enforcement program on commercial vehicles in the world with approximately 17 trucks and buses inspected on average every minute in Canada, Mexico and the United States during the 72-hour period, the CVSA said. More than 1.6 million roadside inspections have been conducted since the Roadcheck\u2019s inception in 1988.
 
The odds of being stopped for inspection, officials said, may be only \u201cslightly\u201d greater than any other day because the program is in effect, but drivers should remain vigilant. Even if some drivers opt to stay off the road during the three Roadcheck days, CVSA president Sgt. John Samis of the Delaware State Police reminded inspections still take place \u201cthe day before International Roadcheck starts, the day after it ends, as well as any other day of the year.\u201d
 
\u201cI\u2019ve always been asked the question of a Roadcheck, how can you announce it, everybody knows it\u2019s coming so they\u2019re going to either fix their truck beforehand or they\u2019re going to do well for those three days or whatever the case may be,\u201d Wirachowsky said. \u201cI get that to a point, but then I\u2019ve often said, well, if you fix your truck once a year because you know Roadcheck\u2019s coming, at least you know Roadcheck\u2019s coming and you fix your truck once a year.\u201d
 
The data collected provides a benchmark for the industry as a whole and a roadmap for guidance and education, which makes it important to not just target observable potential violators for the inspections, and many compliant vehicles and drivers get caught in the net. No particular geographic region will be targeted over another during the event; of course, there will be more inspections where there is larger opportunity, so, for example, one could expect more inspections in Ontario than Prince Edward Island or in Texas than Rhode Island.
 
\u201cThe key is getting everybody perfectly safe,\u201d said Wirachowsky, a former inspector. \u201cMy job was to go out there and find violations and find violators, but you\u2019re striving for the day where, basically from my perspective, it\u2019s impossible to go out and find violations because the industry is doing so well complying on their own.
 
\u201cIndustry strives for that and enforcement has to happen sometimes to try to get them there. It\u2019s not like our whole job is to try to hide behind the trees, jumping out and trying to catch the guy who\u2019s doing wrong. Hopefully, we can\u2019t catch him because he\u2019s not doing anything wrong.\u201d
 
Al Muskewitz is Editor for Wright Media Corp. He can be reached at <\/em>musky@wrightmediacorp.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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