Once again, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual Roadcheck campaign (held June 5-7) showed that tank truck and hazardous materials fleets rank at the top of the list in terms of highway safety. Liquid and dry bulk carriers and their drivers certainly deserve special accolades for leading the way in safety.
At the same time, Roadcheck 2012 highlighted growing out-of-service rates in the oil and gas shale regions. This level of performance in targeted shale area inspections really does not come as a surprise to those who have been following the growth of shale trucking, according to John Conley, president of National Tank Truck Carriers. Effective enforcement will be a key to improving truck safety in these areas.
Roadcheck 2012 Fact Sheet
Driver results were as follows:
All inspections: 95.4% of drivers passed, and 4.6% were placed out of service (4.2% were out of service in 2011).
All Level 1 inspections: 95.1% of drivers passed, and 3.9% were placed out of service (3.7% were out of service in 2011).
HazMat: 97.7% of drivers passed, and 2.3% were placed out of service (2.5% were out of service in 2011).
Vehicle results were as follows:
All inspections: 79.1% of vehicles passed, and 20.9% were placed out of service (19.3% were out of service in 2011).
All Level 1 inspections: 77.6% of vehicles passed, and 22.4% were placed out of service (22.8% were out of service in 2011). HazMat: 84.4% of vehicles passed the inspection, and 15.6% were placed out of service (17.9% were out of service in 2011).
Other observations:
The oilfield and natural gas operations emphasis for 2012 resulted in an out-of-service rate of 28.2% for vehicles and 6.7% for drivers, of 149 inspections conducted in 10 states.