More than 13 percent or nearly 1,600 CMVs inspected during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s “unannounced” brake safety initiative April 25, were sidelined, CVSA reported today.
The safety initiative encompassed 52 U.S. and Canadian jurisdictions and 11,531 total inspections, with the U.S. conducting 10,074 CMV inspections and Canada holding 1,457 inspections.
Fourteen percent of CMVs were placed out-of-service in the U.S. for brake violations and 12.4 percent were sidelined in Canada for brake problems.
The good news is that 86.2 percent of the total number of CMVs inspected had no critical brake-related violations, CVSA reported.
In all, 8,128 air-braked trucks and tractors were identified as requiring anti-lock braking systems and 10.2 percent had ABS violations.
Also, 5,331 trailers were found to require ABS, with 14.3 percent having ABS violations.
According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Large Truck Crash Causation Study, large truck crashes in which the braking capacity was critical were 50 percent more likely to have a brake violation.
Dorothy Cox is former assistant editor – now retired – of The Trucker, and a 20-plus-year trucking journalism veteran. She holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a master’s degree in divinity. Cox has been in journalism since 1972. She has won awards for her writing in both mainstream and trucking journalism.
