I have blogged numerous times since 2007 about the horrible safety levels of our nation’s trucking fleet as documented in the annual Roadcheck Safety Inspections. In Roadcheck, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) teams with state inspectors and they check more trucks on the road than normal. They announce the inspection dates months in advance so all the smart truck drivers who are driving illegally take vacation days and the numbers look better than the reality.
Out of the millions of trucks on our highways, less than 100,000 are inspected over the three day inspection period. Overall, less than 2% of the commercial trucks on our roads are inspected annually. In 2012 the Roadcheck inspections found 22.4 percent of vehicles, and 3.9 percent of drivers, out of service (OOS)! That is more than one in every five trucks taken off the road for safety violations so severe the driver was not allowed to proceed!
I find it interesting that, unlike past years, the percentage of drug and alcohol violations by drivers were not revealed in the CVSA press release. In 2008 I blogged on the Roadcheck results (HERE)which showed there were 92,500 commercial drivers driving IMPAIRED on our roads every day!