The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance has announced that it will be conducting its Brake Safety Week between Sept. 16 and 22. This means that tractor-trailer drivers in New York and around the country can expect closer scrutiny from police officers and commercial vehicle inspectors. During the weeklong safety blitz, inspectors will mostly be performing strict Level I inspections to find truck braking systems that have been poorly maintained or improperly repaired. Commercial vehicles that are seen as a threat to other road users will be ordered off the road, according to the CVSA.
The alarming number of tractor-trailers with faulty or improperly functioning brakes is a known and ongoing problem. When the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had more than 400 trucks inspected following serious accidents, they discovered that a worrying 32.7 percent of them would have been ordered out of service for brake-related safety violations. Even more concerning, the agency’s inspectors found a higher number of brake safety issues on trucks that had been involved in brake-critical accidents.
During the upcoming Brake Safety Week initiative, commercial vehicle inspectors will check the mechanical and electronic systems designed to warn truck drivers about braking system problems as well as the braking systems themselves. The effort is part of the CVSA’s Operation Airbrake program, which is also supported by the FMCSA and the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators.
Hours of service records, which log the amount of time that truck drivers spend behind the wheel, and the citations handed out during safety efforts like Brake Safety Week are sometimes crucial pieces of evidence in motor vehicle accident lawsuits. A personal injury attorney may use this evidence to establish that a truck driver behaved negligently in the past and failed to meet their duty of care to other road users.