Check your hours for Roadcheck next week

TORONTO – If you notice a tad more truck enforcement folks out on the highway next week, it’s because the annual three-day, Continent-wide truck inspection blitz is underway.

Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s 72-hour international Roadcheck takes place between June 7-9.

That means enforcement personnel will be out in full force at inspection sites and in roving patrols, night and day, to check vehicles and their drivers along major highways across North America.

This year, the blitz will focus on hours-of-service compliance and underscore the importance of maintaining logbooks, preventing fatigue, and driving without distractions.

Fatigue is rarely a factor in truck-involved fatalities, but brake issues are routinely the dominating vehicle out of service defect found during Roadcheck, usually compromising more than half of total vehicle defects.

In Canada last year, 80 percent of trucks inspected were deemed safe. The average vehicle out of service rate has trended downward over the past several years.

More than one million inspections have been conducted under Roadcheck since the program was launched in 1988.

Officers will also be busy handing out educational literature and info for safety events to truckers.