CVSA Surprise Inspection Blitz Brings Shocking Statistic
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) sometimes likes to announce its inspection blitzes to help drivers prepare for them, but other times it likes to catch drivers by surprise to see what they are doing when they think nobody is looking. This is what happened to hazmat drivers on June 12th-16th, when the CVSA did an unannounced increase in inspecting hazmat and dangerous goods.
Details
During the five days, CVSA inspectors looked at 8,395 hazmat/dangerous goods across 7,572 vehicles throughout the United States and Canada. They found that there were 2,578 packages with violations, 701 of which were severe enough to warrant an out-of-service declaration.
This means that, if the sample size is indicative of the greater whole, over 30% of packages that require extra caution to handle for safety reasons are being handled in a substandard manner.
“For motor carriers and drivers, safely transporting HM/DG is imperative to the safety of the driver, the public and the environment,” CVSA said. “For inspectors, inspecting vehicles transporting HM/DG is a complex and detailed process that involves safely looking for any leaking materials or unsecured HM/DG cargo, and checking shipping papers, placarding, marking, labeling, packaging and loading compliance.”
Unfortunately for us Americans, Canada had us slightly beat, with them scoring a 28.8% violation rate compared to our 31.1%.
Conclusion
The number is a sharp increase from the year prior, which saw 6,668 inspections and 1,774 violations, hovering above a 26% rate.
While some of the violations in the 2023 inspection blitz are related to red-tape, such as a misplacement of a label, others were much more grave, with over 8% of them being so severe that the vehicle was deemed unsafe to continue driving on the road until the problem was remedied. This is the number that hazmat and dangerous good truckers should strive to get as close to zero as possible. Be sure that your cargo is secured to the best extent possible to prevent any potential mishaps that will make an out-of-service order a minor inconvenience by comparison.
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