Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/723417
September 2016 | Overdrive | 43 Colorado border at Raton maintained a particularly active inspection program. Kerr says that, in addition to the sworn road officers, the state also em- ploys about 90 civilian inspectors who work the fixed locations, six major facili- ties on I-10 and I-40 on the Eastern and Western ends of the state, and I-25 in the North. Six other off-interstate sites located on state and U.S. highways near state borders also are manned routinely. At the state facility in Lordsburg on I-10 near the Arizona border, Kerr says, technology increasingly is employed to screen trucks and ensure officers are most often "doing inspections on vehicles that need inspections." That targeted approach showed up in the state's 2015 numbers as 1.3 violations issued for every inspection conducted. That number is not high, lending credence to operators' testimonies of fairness. New Mexico ranks far down the list of the toughest states for violations per individual inspec- tion, at No. 33. Among violation catego- ries, the state only ranks particularly high in the moving violations category, where Kerr says it's put a fair amount of empha- sis in areas where an uptick in oil-field-re- lated traffic has created problems. Lordsburg and some of the other larger facilities use a license-plate reader that also can automatically read DOT numbers. Weigh-in-motion and infrared detectors also are deployed, the latter at two facilities and via a van that can be deployed with portable scales to mobile inspection sites. Infrared scanners show inspectors an approaching truck's heat signature. "We can tell if a tire's low, if the hub is too hot or too cold," Kerr says. "That's the future [of all screening]. You know when you're doing an inspection that it's on a vehicle that needs to be inspected. You're not wasting their time or your time. You're actually making a difference." Moving violations as a percentage of all violations 10.4 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 New Mexico National average 11.6 10.7 9.8 4.5 4.3 4.5 4.6 10.4 4.6 Category Maintenance Lights Brakes Tires Moving violations Hours of service Percentage of all violations 60.7% 16.3% 10.9% 5.7% 10.4% 12.6% National rank of percentage 36 23 36 15 10 21 INSPECTIONS PER LANE-MILE: 8 NATIONAL RANK: 6 VIOLATION PROFILE VIOLATIONS PER INSPECTION: 1.3 NATIONAL RANK: 33 Source: Unless otherwise noted, all numbers based on 2015 inspection data analyzed by RigDig Business Intelligence (rigdig.com/bi) and Overdrive. Among the four states on the U.S.- Mexico border, inspection numbers overall are among the highest in the nation, as Overdrive reported in 2015 in its profile of the Arizona enforce- ment program. With this year's update, California, Texas and Arizona are the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 most-intense states when it comes to incidence of inspec- tion, behind perennial leader Maryland. New Mexico sits not far behind at No. 6. The inspection intensity measures are affected by a large number of border inspections of Mexican-domiciled trucks. Of 95,000 total inspections in 2015, says New Mexico Capt. Greg Kerr, about 15 percent were conducted by dedicated staff at the state's Santa Teresa facility on trucks coming in from Mexico. What's more, as the clean-inspection rates make clear, from a violations perspective, New Mexico's more in line with clean-inspections champ California than the other two viola- tion-heavy border states. INSPECTION'S HOT ZONE 1 California 13 inspections per lane-mile 57.1% clean 2 Arizona 9 inspections per lane-mile 29.5% clean 3 New Mexico 8 inspections per lane-mile 47.5% clean 4 Texas 10 inspections per lane-mile 24.2% clean 'BORDER EFFECT' INCREASES INSPECTIONS 1 2 3 4 New Mexico's heavy roadside presence and active inspection program produces one of the highest inspection-intensity rankings nation- wide. Violation concentrations are what you would expect from such a targeted approach, with hours of service, speeding and light viola- tions ranking high in its violation mix. However, the state's inspectors' reputation for fairness is underscored by its low violations-per-inspection rate and relatively high percentage of clean inspections. Access data for all 48 continental states via the download and interactive maps at OverdriveOnline.com/csa. SOURCE for all data in this story: RigDig Business Intelligence (rigdig.com/bi, 866-237-7788) mined federal data from 2015, unless otherwise noted.