Commercial motor vehicle enforcement personnel in Canada and the United States conducted more than 62,000 driver and vehicle safety inspections on large trucks and buses during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) 30th annual International Roadcheck, June 6-8, 2017. 23 percent of vehicles and 4.2 percent of drivers that received Level I Inspections were placed out of service.
International Roadcheck is a three-day enforcement event when CVSA-certified inspectors conduct high-volume, large-scale, high-visibility roadside inspections of large trucks and buses. Commercial motor vehicles and their drivers were checked at inspection sites, weigh stations and roving patrol locations along roadways in North America throughout the 72-hour enforcement initiative.
- A total of 62,013 Level I, II and III Inspections were conducted during 2017 International Roadcheck.
- 19.4 percent of commercial motor vehicles inspected (Level I, II or III Inspections) were placed out of service. 4.7 percent of all drivers inspected (Level I, II, and III Inspections) were placed out of service.
- 40,944 inspections were North American Standard (NAS) Level I Inspections. A Level I Inspection is a 37-step procedure that includes examination of both the driver and vehicle. Other inspections conducted included the NAS Level II Walk-Around Inspection (12,787) and the NAS Level III Driver-Only Inspection (8,282).
- 7,713 inspections were conducted in Canada; 54,300 were conducted in the United States.
Vehicle-related results are as follows:
- Of the 40,944 Level I Inspections conducted, 23 percent (9,398) percent were placed out of service for vehicle-related violations.
- The top three out-of-service vehicle violations were for brake systems (26.9 percent of vehicle out-of-service violations), cargo securement (15.7 percent) and tires/wheels (15.1 percent).
- Of the 2,267 vehicles carrying hazardous materials/dangerous goods that received a Level I Inspection, 12.8 percent were placed out of service for vehicle-related violations.
- The top three vehicle violations related to the transportation of hazardous materials/dangerous goods were for loading and securement (40.4 percent of all out-of-service hazardous materials/dangerous goods violations), shipping papers (22.7 percent) and placarding (20.8 percent).
- 398 motorcoaches received Level I Inspections; 10.1 percent (40) were placed out of service for vehicle-related violations.
- Of the vehicles placed out of service, brake adjustment and brake system violations combined to represent 41.4 percent (7,743) of all out-of-service vehicle violations.
Driver results are as follows:
- Of the 62,013 total Level I, II, and III Inspections conducted, 4.7 percent (2,940) of drivers were placed out of service for driver-related violations.
- Of Level I, II and III Inspections of vehicles carrying hazardous materials/dangerous goods, 1.9 percent were placed out of service for driver-related violations.
- Out of the 598 motorcoaches that received Level I, II or III Inspections, 3.8 percent (23) of drivers were placed out of service for driver-related violations.
- The top three driver-related violations were for hours of service (32.3 percent of driver out-of-service violations), wrong class license (14.9 percent) and false log book (11.3 percent).
- There were 710 safety belt violations.
Each year, International Roadcheck places special emphasis on a category of violations. This year’s focus was cargo securement. While checking for compliance with safe cargo securement regulations is always part of roadside inspections, CVSA highlighted proper cargo securement this year as a reminder of its importance. Cargo securement violations (not including hazardous materials/dangerous goods loading/securement) represented 15.7 percent of all vehicle out of service violations during 2017 International Roadcheck.
The top five violations related to cargo securement (out of a total of 3,282) in the United States were:
- No or improper load securement (423)
- Failure to secure vehicle equipment (379)
- Leaking, spilling, blowing, falling cargo (281)
- Insufficient tiedowns to prevent forward movement for load not blocked by headerboard, bulkhead or cargo (256)
- Failure to secure load (178)
The specific out-of-service (OOS) violation percentage distributions (numbers indicate a percentage of the total out-of-service violations by category) from 2017 International Roadcheck are shown below:
| Vehicle OOS Violations Category |
Percentage of Vehicle OOS Violations |
Driver OOS Violation Category |
Percentage of Driver OOS Violations |
Hazmat OOS Violation Category |
Percentage of Hazmat OOS Violations |
| Brake Systems |
26.9% |
Hours of Service |
32.3% |
Loading/Securement |
40.4% |
| Cargo Securement |
15.7% |
Wrong Class License |
14.9% |
Shipping Papers |
22.7% |
| Tires/Wheels |
15.1% |
False Log Book |
11.3% |
Placarding |
20.8% |
| Brake Adjustment |
14.5% |
Suspended License |
3.4% |
Package Integrity |
4.3% |
| Lighting Devices |
11.6% |
Drugs/Alcohol |
1.6% |
Transport Vehicle Markings |
0.8% |
| Suspensions |
4.7% |
Driver’s Age |
0.4% |
|
|
| Steering Mechanisms |
2.3% |
|
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|
| Frames |
1.0% |
|
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|
|
| Coupling Devices |
0.8% |
|
|
|
|
| Fuel Systems |
0.6% |
|
|
|
|
| Driveline/Driveshaft |
0.2% |
|
|
|
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| Exhaust Systems |
0.2% |
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James Jaillet August 28, 2017
Inspectors will, at their discretion, begin issuing citations for non-compliance with the federal electronic logging device mandate on the Dec. 18 deadline for adoption, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance announced Monday. However, the 10-hour out-of-service order associated with non-compliance with the mandate will begin April 1, 2018, CVSA also announced.
CVSA, which is made up of enforcement officials and meant to provide uniformity in enforcement of trucking and bus regulations, says it has notified FMCSA of its plan to begin citation enforcement Dec. 18 and out-of-service enforcement in April.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration confirmed CVSA’s enforcement plans. FMCSA also confirmed that the delay in out-of-service enforcement does not affect the the date by which truckers must adopt an automatic onboard recording device (AOBRD — a form of electronic logging system with more limited functionality than an ELD) if they want to extend their ELD compliance to December 2019.
“After Dec. 18, 2017, if you don’t have an AOBRD or ELD the violation will be cited, and a driver could be fined, but they won’t be put out of service. Companies that continually violate the rule could be subject to federal investigation as well,” says FMCSA spokesperson Duane DeBruyne.
The slight delay in the enforcement of the out-of-service criteria “will provide the motor carrier industry, shippers and roadside enforcement community with time to adjust to the new requirement before vehicles are placed out of service for ELD violations,” CVSA said in its announcement. This strategy is in line with how CVSA has handled enforcement of other major trucking regulations, the group said.
Inspectors and roadside officers will begin documenting ELD violations on the Dec. 18 deadline, and citations will be issued to drivers “at the jurisdiction’s discretion,” CVSA says.
Violations related to ELDs will, in a way, be considered hours of service violations for purposes of the out of service criteria. Various ELD-related violations will ultimately come with the out-of-service equivalent of not having a logbook, having false logs and not maintaining previous seven days of duty status. For instance, a driver or carrier not using a logging device that fits with federal requirements will be “considered to have no record of duty status,” according to updated out-of-service criteria issued by CVSA earlier this year.
Read more on the out-of-service details at this link.
The Monday announcement confirms what two FMCSA representatives hinted at last week in a special ELD seminar held at the Great American Trucking Show.
Asked by an audience member about rumors of “soft enforcement” of the ELD mandate December deadline during the Thursday, Aug. 24, session, FMCSA representatives would say only that officers “may or may not” take enforcement action against drivers not utilizing ELDs. CVSA’s slight delay in the out of service criteria related to ELDs answers the trucker’s question, in part, delaying the perhaps most severe enforcement action that could be brought.
Reports have indicated CVSA’s approach will be “phased-in” enforcement, but the CVSA noted it will begin enforcement of the ELD mandate on the Dec. 18 compliance date.
James Jaillet June 27, 2017
FMCSA says it will respond to the National Academies report within 120 days.
National Academies of Science researchers have issued a Congressionally mandated report recommending that the U.S. Department of Transportation overhaul its Compliance, Safety, Accountability carrier rating system.
The report says DOT needs to make CSA’s Safety Measurement System more fair and accurate in assessing motor carriers’ safety risk, and that data used to create the rankings is in need of “immediate attention.”
Key recommendations from the report, made public Tuesday, include:
- Reconfiguring the SMS statistical model (the percentile ranking used to target carriers for intervention) with an “item response theory” (IRT) model that more accurately targets at-risk carriers;
- Making the scoring system more transparent and easier for carriers to replicate and understand; and
- Departing from using relative metrics as the sole means for targeting carriers.
The NAS urged further study of the impact of the public display of SMS rankings. Researchers recommend that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration better collaborate with state partners and other data providers to collect more data and higher quality data, specifically related to crash reports and to carriers’ operations (miles traveled, number of power units, etc.).
NAS will provide the roughly 130-page report, “Improving Motor Carrier Safety Measurement,” to FMCSA and to Congress, which called for the report in the 2015 FAST Act highway bill. The act also pulled the SMS’ BASIC percentile rankings from public view.
The law stipulated that the NAS must issue recommendations on how FMCSA can fix the data and methodology issues that have plagued CSA since its 2011 onset — and that FMCSA adopt the recommendations — before the SMS can be made public again.
It’s unclear yet how the agency intends to act on the report’s recommendations or the timeline on which it plans to adopt any CSA reforms. FMCSA confirmed it has received the report and says it will issue a response to Congress within the 120 days allotted by the FAST Act. An agency spokesperson says it is “reviewing the findings.”
The agency has already undertaken an effort to improve crash reporting through its Post-Accident Report Review Subcommittee of its Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee. That group is tasked with making recommendations to improve crash-report utility and standardization.
The NAS report on CSA and its underlying data reaches an oft-heard conclusion: While the premise behind CSA’s SMS is sound, FMCSA’s execution of the program was flawed from the ground up. CSA relies on in some ways inadequate data, NAS researchers conclude, which is then funneled into a scoring system that has not been “sufficiently empirically validated.”
Findings in other ways reiterate conclusions reached by Overdrive’s multi-year CSA’s Data Trail series, one of many analyses of CSA’s flaws and their impact on carriers. The report notes the chief criticisms of the CSA program: Some BASICs lack correlation with crash risk, data insufficiency, use of relative rankings, use of non-fault or nonpreventable crashes, state variations in inspections and violations, lack of consistency in violation coding, a lack of transparency of the SMS algorithm and the public availability of SMS rankings.
“Conceptually, SMS is structured reasonably,” the NAS report concludes. However, researchers add, “too much of the detail is ad hoc,” referring to FMCSA’s execution of the program.
The report doesn’t go into depth about its recommendations for a new statistical model to replace the SMS model, but it touts the IRT model as one that has been proven to work in fields such as health care and education to achieve outcomes similar to those sought by the SMS. IRT models are used in health care to assess the quality of care given to patients and in education to assess teachers’ performance. In both fields, IRT models are used to target poor performers for intervention, just as FMCSA does with the SMS rankings.
NAS’ principal recommendation is that FMCSA develop an IRT model over the next two years and then implement it in place of the SMS “if it [demonstrates] to perform well in identifying motor carriers for alerts.” Transitioning to an IRT model, the study’s authors believe, would in part help soothe some of these problems. It would make violation weighting more data-focused (less reliant on severity weights), provide better transparency, account for holes in data and more.
Other NAS recommendations seek to tackle SMS flaws, too. FMCSA needs to work more closely with states to homogenize data reporting and collection, researchers recommend. The agency also should find new sources to assess carriers’ safety risk, such as analyzing driver turnover rates and driver pay methods.
FMCSA needs to build a more “user-friendly version” of the Motor Carrier Management Information System (the data well that feeds CSA) and make its scoring methodology more accessible, NAS says. Such changes would make it easier for carriers to understand how they’re being scored and learn how to improve their scores and, hence, their safety practices.
Before going public with a revamped SMS, the agency should also further analyze the ramifications of publicly displaying the SMS rankings. Shippers and brokers have to varying degrees used the rankings to deny carriers business, while insurers in some cases used the system to charge higher premiums.
What’s your view on the issues identified with CSA? If you’re reading on a smartphone, tap the image to call and leave us a message to weigh in with your story. We’ll round up responses in a special mailbag podcast. Alternately, drop a comment below. If you’re on a desktop, call 530-408-6423. Make sure to tell us your name and state of residence.
Researchers also recommend FMCSA find a way to implement an absolute scoring metric into the SMS algorithm to select carriers for intervention, rather than relying solely on relative rankings. Relative ratings can be a moving target for carriers trying to boost their safety culture.
NAS, established by Congress in 1863 as a private institution, intends to provide nonpartisan and objective research to lawmakers and regulators to help steer policy decisions. Congress funneled the funding for the new study through FMCSA.
