Out-of-service (OOS) citations for vehicles and drivers during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's (CVSA) Roadcheck program were down this year for the first time since 2002. Roadcheck 2005, which took place June 7-9, involved 60,562 inspections of commercial vehicles and drivers at 1,348 locations throughout North America.
The vehicle OOS rate was 22.6% this year, down from 23.9% in 2004. Driver OOS rate fell to 4.5%, down from 5% last year.
“It's certainly a good result,” says Stephen Keppler, CVSA director of policy & programs. “The last couple of years the rates had gone up. That kind of decrease is significant because year-over-year [results] typically don't move that drastically.”
Brake-related citations remain the No. 1 reason by far that vehicles are taken out of service. Of total OOS citations issued, 30.1% pertained to faults in brake-adjustment and 25.2% to brake systems. Lighting problems accounted for 11.8%, tires and wheels 8.9%, safe loading 8.5%, and suspensions 5.1%.
In terms of overall driver-related violations, hours-of-service citations dropped to 54.2% from 61.6% in 2004. However, when we look at results from the U.S. and Canada separately, the trend is not so clear-cut. In the U.S., hours-of-service citations as a percentage of overall OOS citations increased this year — 3.8% compared to 3.44% in 2004. In Canada, the percentage declined to 1.3% from 2.5% last year.
Falsified logbooks were the No. 2 reason for OOS driver citations, with a rate of 12.1%. Safety belt violations jumped significantly, to 1,143 (2%) from 755 (1.3%). Total license-related OOS violations increased in 2005 to 12.3% from 10.5%. This includes problems with suspended licenses, endorsements, and disqualified drivers.
www.cvsa.org.
