Vehicle out-of-service up, benched drivers down: CVSA

WASHINGTON, (June 25, 2003) — The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, an association of highway safety enforcement agencies in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, has announced that this year’s 72-hour Roadcheck blitz resulted in the highest number of Level 1 road-side inspections than ever before.

The 16th annual event, held June 3-5, resulted 43,583 Level 1 inspections, the most comprehensive vehicle/driver inspection, by 9,471 state and provincial personnel throughout Canada and the U.S. The inspectors placed 24,171 CVSA decals on vehicles found to be free of critical safety defects (43.3 percent of the total). A total 55,784 North American Standard Inspections were performed overall — up 43.5 per cent more than in 1999.

Roadcheck 2003 resulted in 22.7 per cent of vehicles inspected being placed out of service for mechanical problems, up from 22.0 per cent in 2002. For drivers, the 2003 inspections resulted in a 5.0 per cent driver out of service rate, down from 5.7 per cent last year.

Hazardous materials inspections this year resulted in a 3 per cent out of service increase over 2002 (17.0 to 20.2 percent) and stayed the same for drivers (2.4 per cent), while for motorcoach inspections, the out-of-service rates for vehicles and drivers both decreased from 11.7 to 9.5 and 8.7 to 1.7 per cent, respectively.

In addition to CVSA, other participating organizations for Roadcheck include the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, Transport Canada, and Secretariat of Communications and Transportation in Mexico.