Truck Safety

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) and state actions to ensure that commercial motor vehicles correct identified safety violations.

GAO found that: (1) neither FHwA nor the states comprehensively tracked corrections of out-of-service violations; (2) preliminary results from FHwA-funded studies showed an overall noncompliance rate of 12 percent, and individual state noncompliance rates varied from 9 to 53 percent; (3) internal control procedures to ensure compliance with out-of-service orders included reinspection, verification, and carrier certification; (4) most states failed to use adequate control procedures and document results, and only five states used all three control procedures; (5) FHwA emphasized roadside inspections over control procedures; (6) drivers left unattended at inspection sites were more likely to honor out-of-service orders; (7) states failed to reinspect due to limited resources and operational restraints; (8) FHwA had limited ability to enforce carrier certification regulations, due to the voluntary nature of the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP); and (9) only about 40 percent of 1988 and 1989 inspection data was available due to multiple problems at the federal and state level. GAO also found that other actions to increase compliance included: (1) timely, state entry of data into a federal information system; (2) a 1-year license disqualification for the first offense; and (3) recording reinspection activity on inspection forms.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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