Ryan Witkowski
Truckers, give yourselves a pat on the back. Over 94% of all drivers inspected during this year’s International Roadcheck did not have any out-of-service violations.
Conducted annually by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, International Roadcheck is a 72-hour high-visibility, high-volume commercial motor vehicle inspection and enforcement initiative. This year’s event took place May 12-14.
On Tuesday, Aug. 25, CVSA released the results from the 2026 International Roadcheck. Over the three-day event, inspectors conducted 54,575 inspections of commercial motor vehicles and drivers across North America. From those inspections, 81% of vehicles and 94.2% of drivers did not have out-of-service violations.
Conversely, 10,350 trucks (19%) and 3,184 drivers (5.8%) were placed out of service due to one or more violations. According to CVSA, a commercial motor vehicle or driver is placed out of service “when an inspector finds a violation that is serious enough to make continued operation unsafe.” If that’s the case, the vehicle or driver must remain off the road until the violation has been addressed or brought into compliance.
Each year, the agency highlights certain aspects of roadside inspections during International Roadcheck. For this year’s event, inspectors were focusing on ELD tampering, falsification or manipulation during driver inspections and cargo securement during vehicle inspections.
When it comes to vehicle inspections, the top violation was with brake systems, with 3,379 violations recorded for an out-of-service rate of 24.3%. Other violations making up the top five include:
- Tires: 2,914 violations, 20.9% OOS rate
- 20% Defective Brakes: 2,072 violations, 14.9% OOS rate
- Cargo Securement: 1,724 violations, 12.4% OOS rate
- Lights: 1,659 violations, 11.9% OOS rate
As far as drivers go, inspectors identified 3,806 total driver out-of-service violations in the U.S. and 163 in Canada, for a combined total of 3,969 driver out-of-service violations during International Roadcheck.
The number one violation for drivers was having no medical card, with 1,072 drivers being sidelined for that. Other issues rounding out the top five included:
- Hours of service: 929 violations
- No CDL: 620 violations
- English proficiency: 361 violations
- False record of duty status: 266 violations
The agency said that CVSA decals – which are given to CMVs without any critical vehicle inspection violations – were applied to 11,880 power units and 5,751 trailers during International Roadcheck. In total, 17,680 decals were distributed throughout North America during the 72-hour event.
One overwhelmingly positive result came in terms of seat belt usage. During the event, just 1.25% of all drivers inspected were not wearing a seat belt, resulting in a total of 667 seat belt violations being issued during this year’s International Roadcheck.
According to CVSA, roughly 13 vehicles per minute were inspected throughout North America during the event.
