Enforcement officers with the Iowa Department of Transportation will be busy over the next three days checking out semis and other large vehicles. The department is taking part in a 72-hour continuous enforcement effort that’s happening across the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Major Ned Lewis, with the DOT, says 60 officers will be inspecting all vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds that are on Iowa’s roadways. “We will have motor vehicle enforcement officers located througout the state at our interstate scale sites at Avoca, Dallas County, Jasper County and Brandon,” Lewis said.
The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) Roadcheck runs today through Thursday. During last year’s event, officers conducted more than 65,000 inspections across the U.S. “The most important part of this is finding vehicles or drivers who are not in compliance with the rules and regulations,” Lewis said. “Those drivers and/or vehicles can be placed out of service for serious safety violations.”
Most vehicles or drivers are placed out of service because of issues with their brakes or discrepancies with the driver’s logbook. The 2010 Roadcheck found vehicle compliance rates of 80%, while drivers had a 95.6% pass rate. “Most of the vehicles and drivers do a great job. We do put a fair amount of vehicles out of service for severe safety violations,” Lewis said.
Busses are not required to stop at the scale locations in Iowa.