Road users in Oklahoma and around the country could be more likely to see semi-tractor trailers being pulled over for safety inspections in early June. This is when the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance\’s International Roadcheck safety initiative will take place in 2017. The 72-hour-long campaign is scheduled to get underway on June 6, and the CVSA revealed on March 13 that inspectors will be focusing much of their efforts on cargo safety and securement.
Shifting cargo can make commercial vehicles traveling at highway speeds unstable and unsafe, and CVSA inspectors are expected to check cargo tie downs closely during the North American Standard Level I inspections that are common during these International Roadcheck events. These rigorous inspections examine drivers as well as their vehicles, and CVSA says that its inspectors conducted more than 42,000 of them during the 2016 International Roadcheck initiative. However, the nonprofit group maintains that its annual safety push is as much about education as enforcement, and a cargo safety flier has been produced that is designed to help truck drivers and logistics companies to avoid sanctions.
Removing unsafe commercial vehicles from the nation\’s roads is one of the chief goals of the yearly safety push, and CVSA figures indicate that one in five of the tractor-trailers inspected during 2016\’s International Roadcheck were ordered out of service. The most common reasons cited for pulling trucks off the road were hours of service and brake violations according to the nonprofit group.
The violations discovered during truck inspections can be valuable to personal injury attorneys seeking civil remedies on behalf of truck accident victims. Persistent violations could be used to establish a pattern of reckless behavior, and lawyers could use this kind of evidence to demonstrate that truck drivers or their employers have failed in the past to take adequate steps to protect road users from injury.