Joelle Lang-Fredman
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) Tens of thousands of trucks and drivers are taken off the road by state troopers in Maryland and Virginia each year because they do not meet safety standards. And authorities fear it will only get worse.
Last year, one in five commercial vehicles pulled over were deemed unsafe. The Washington Transportation Planning Board is worried that the situation will worsen due to an increase in online shopping for goods and produce.
“In the Washington Metro area, we can expect an increase in commercial vehicles because more people are shopping online as oppose to going to a retail space, more people are ordering their groceries online,” John Townsend, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s Manager of Public and Government Affairs, said. “Guess what delivers them? Trucks.”
The board expects to see a large increase of commercial vehicles in the next 15 years, Townsend said.
Currently, state troopers are randomly stopping trucks for inspections. Beginning in October, the state police will issue a surprise raid on trucks on the Capital Beltway, which sees over 8,000 trucks daily.
Townsend said that these inspections catch trucks that may outwardly appear fit for the road.
“A truck can look safe, when you look at it cosmetically, but it is with the in-depth inspections that they detect these problems and these defects,” Townsend said.
Defects can include the truck being overweight, having worn-out or bald tires, or that the driver spent too much time on the road and hasn’t had enough sleep.
While there are mandatory inspection sites for trucks along the road, Townsend said that drivers often take alternate routes as not to pass them.
“They know where the weigh and inspection stations are and so they take the back roads to avoid them,” Townsend said.
When a driver is caught as unfit or driving an unfit vehicle, they can be fined millions of dollars. Last year, Maryland collected over $8 millions in fines.
In Virginia, a driver may receive a citation with a fine attached, or can be summoned to court for a hearing. Trucks are impounded until they are sent for repair and certified as safe.
In 2014, 3,600 people lost lives due to crashes with large trucks across the U.S., a 16 percent increase from 2009.
When a car and a truck collide, the passengers in the car most often suffer the worst.
“Many drivers are nervous around big trucks, especially on an Interstate and they have good reason to be,” Townsend said. “The majority of persons killed in crashes with big trucks are the occupants of other vehicles.”
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