4 Brake Safety Statistics That Will Stun Anyone in Transportation Operations & Dispatching
Dispatchers are well aware that the vehicles they direct can pile on a lot of mileage as a part of day-to-day operations. Many are driven hard, and the wear and tear of constant braking throughout the year can have a cumulative effect. That’s what makes regular brake check-ups so vital, as the industry continues to work on improving safety. Every September, Brake Safety Day unearths new figures regarding on-the-spot brake inspections in the US and Canada.
What statistics did Brake Safety Day uncover this year, and what can aspiring dispatchers learn from them? Here’s a closer look.
The CVSA Physically Inspected 7,698 Vehicles in the US and Canada on Brake Safety Day
An annual day organized by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), Brake Safety Day consists of thousands of inspections of the brake systems on commercial trucks in Canada and the US. The initiative is organized by both the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) as well as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
This official backing makes Brake Safety Day a landmark safety campaign, with local participants managing to inspect 1,337 individual trucks in Canada and 6,361 in the United States on Thursday, September 7th. This means that every minute of Brake Safety Day, an average of five vehicles were being physically inspected, with the aim of “identifying and removing vehicles with critical brake violations from our roadways.”
A Whopping 14 Per Cent of Vehicles Were Removed from Service with Brake Violations
Part of the reason the industry looks out for the Brake Safety Day report every year is the important insights it can offer. This year, 14 per cent of all vehicles inspected were deemed to be in poor enough condition to warrant an ‘Out of Service’ (OOS) status, removing them from the road and from planned routes immediately—with fines in place of up to $25,000 USD ($31,000 CAD) should the vehicle be utilized again without being fixed. This resulted in over a thousand vehicles being withdrawn from service over a single day, a serious development in the transportation operations & dispatch world. As dispatching students know, having a truck put out of service can have a big impact on meeting delivery deadlines and keeping customers happy.
The Increase on 2016’s Figures Will Concern Anyone With a Career in the Transportation Industry
Compared to the same figures reported in 2016, brake-related OOS violations were ultimately up from 13.2 per cent to 14 per cent. While it’s not a huge jump, it’s still a worrying trend for an industry that is focussed on consistently improving safety figures.
As anyone with a career in the transportation industry can attest, part of the reason for this jump is that there has been an increased number of delivery vehicles on roads given the improved economic environment. An increase in the number of deliveries could have put strain on maintenance teams. However, professionals working in transportation know that even during boom times, safety is always important.
ABS Violations Were Common: A Worrying Discovery for Those in Transportation Operations
Any driver who has had to hit the brakes on an icy road knows of the crucial edge that ABS systems can give in providing better control and preventing skidding. For this reason, the CVSA also records ABS maintenance stats. Worryingly, it reported that 14 per cent of trailers had defective ABS and that 11 per cent of all inspected air-braked power units with ABS weren’t functioning up to par. It shows that there’s room for improvement—an important challenge that the next generation of transportation professionals can help tackle.
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