The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) will hold this year's annual Roadcheck from June 8-10.
Operation Roadcheck is a 72-hour roadside inspection and enforcement blitz in which an estimated 10,000 inspectors set up more than 1,000 checkpoints on highways across North America to monitor truck safety compliance. Since its inception in 1988, Operation Roadcheck is the largest targeted enforcement program on commercial vehicles in the world with an estimated 14 trucks or buses being inspected, on average, every minute from Canada to Mexico during the 72-hour period.
The inspections are held in cooperation with the FMCSA, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, Transport Canada and the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation of Mexico.
As in past events, this year's Roadcheck will focus on commercial vehicle and driver safety and security. However, this year's version has the added bonus of being the first safety blitz that will affect your CSA 2010 score. Drivers should make sure their logbooks are current and their equipment properly maintained with no violations as CVSA inspectors will be checking both. Keep in mind that all inspection violations will become part of your CSA 2010 record. What inspectors find, or don't find, can affect your CSA 2010 ratings. Even violations not resulting in an out-of-service order will be tabulated into the CSA 2010 safety measurement system (SMS).
Under CSA 2010, vehicle-maintenance, load-securement violations, driver history, driver fitness (driver appropriately licensed), carrier crash history, and the use of controlled substances are among the criteria used to calculate a carrier's BASIC rating. Such data from roadside inspections is then measured to determine whether a carrier qualifies for an intervention by the FMCSA. For more information on CSA 2010, check http://csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov/.
For more information on Operation Roadcheck, visit http://www.cvsa.org/.