Speeding was the top violation for truck and bus drivers during July’s driver safety roadside event held by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.
Called Operation Safer Driver Week, it also drew first-time participation by the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which in a parallel event targeted commercial motor vehicle (CMV) carriers who already had a history of crashes and unsafe driving behavior.
Also involving Mexico and Canada, the roadside inspections in the United States, saw 23,871 CMV drivers and 9,366 passenger vehicle drivers observed engaging in unsafe driving behaviors.
Law enforcement personnel issued a total of 8,438 warnings and 12,264 citations, consisting of 4,420 warnings and 3,158 citations to CMV drivers, and 4,018 warnings and 9,106 citations to passenger vehicle drivers.
Speeding was the No. 1 violation for both kinds of drivers, totaling 7,774 citations and 5,143 warnings issued to truck and bus operators.
Other top kinds of citations included failure to use a seat belt (1,908), distracted driving/using a handheld phone (726) and improper lane change (325). Another top cause for truckers to be cited was failure to obey a traffic control device (498).
FMCSA field staff completed 90 high-risk and 201 moderate-risk carrier investigations, resulting in 64 conditional ratings and 30 unsatisfactory ratings.
Also, three driver notices of claim are planned, 21 carriers entered the denial of access process, 10 out-of-service orders were issued and one pattern of safety violations case is under review. Out of 291 investigations, nine resulted in enforcement for the violation of unsafe driving regulations.