INTERNATIONAL NEWS
CTA urges CVSA to count 'screen/triage' inspections
In a recent discussion paper submitted to the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) insists that anytime a commercial vehicle is required to enter a truck inspection station or is stopped by a mobile enforcement unit – even if it is only a quick check, or what the enforcement community calls a 'screen' or 'triage' inspection to ensure the driver and vehicle are safe – an inspection should be deemed to have taken place and be recorded on the carrier's profile as a passed inspection.
The CTA says it is sensitive to CVSA's desire to utilize state and provincial inspection resources most efficiently by attempting to select for more thorough inspection (CVSA level I, II or III) those carriers/vehicles/drivers most likely to have deficiencies. However, it says the system used to rate carriers – such as CSA in the US or provincial monitoring systems in Canada – must accurately reflect a carrier's inspection performance in a true context of exposure. To do this, says the CTA, it's critical that ALL inspections are documented.
The CTA cites an example of a carrier on a high-exposure highway that sees 100 trucks stop at an inspection station. Of those 100 trucks, 98 are screened/triaged and then sent on their way leaving only two trucks subject to further inspection. Of this final pair that undergo a CVSA level I, II or III inspection, one truck passes with no out-of-service defects while one has defects. Since CVSA currently tracks only inspections that generate reports, the out-of-service rate for the carrier on paper for that day is 50%,
In reality, the CTA argues, the failure rate should be 1% since 99 of the carrier's 100 trucks were
deemed fit.
It is estimated that in Canada about 96 of every 100 trucks that are 'screened/triaged' are sent on their way without any documentation or recording of the event – an important statistic and one that should be reflected when reporting on the safety of the industry.
While some in enforcement argue that a 'screen/triage' inspection is too quick to be given credit,
the CTA maintains that even in a short screen/triage inspection, a significant amount of information can be gathered on the driver and the vehicle. It argues many of the fundamentals of inspection found in CVSA level I, II and III inspections are performed in that short period of time and that CVSA-trained officers interact with trucks and drivers 24/7, 365 days a year. These professionals know what they are looking at.
The CTA acknowledges the value of screen/triage inspections in keeping the traffic flow moving and is not calling for an end to these inspections. The Alliance contends, though, that there has to be a way to efficiently collect the information on screen/triage inspections while still maintaining efficient flow of commercial traffic through the inspection process.
