Nearly 5,000 trucks taken off the road during safety blitz

This year, nearly 5,000 commercial vehicles were placed out of service during the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) annual Brake Safety Week inspection campaign.

This year, Brake Safety Week was held throughout the U.S. and Canada from September 16 — 22.

During the weeklong campaign, 35,080 commercial motor vehicle inspections were conducted. While conducting these inspections, the CVSA says that critical vehicle inspection items were discovered in the brake systems of 4,955 (14.1 percent) of inspected vehicles. These vehicles were all placed out of service.

Brake violations were the top out-of-service violation during this year’s CVSA sponsored International RoadCheck in June.

The out of service percentage for this year’s Brake Safety campaign was nearly identical to last year’s. In 2017, the CVSA replaced Brake Safety Week with two Brake Safety Days — one announced and the other a surprise. During the announced Brake Safety Day on September 7, 2017, 7,698 trucks were inspected and 14% were placed out of service for brake violations. During the unannounced Brake Safety Day event on May 3, 2017, 9,524 inspections were conducted and 12% of vehicles were placed out of service for brake violations.

The CVSA says that the goal for Brake Safety Week is to “to reduce the number of crashes involving brake-related problems by raising awareness throughout the motor carrier community of the importance of properly functioning brake systems and by conducting roadside inspections to identify and remove vehicles with critical brake violations from our roadways.”