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Be Aware – DOT Audits Are Targeting These Vehicle Maintenance Issues by Pat Dull, NRMS Safety Specialist

Recently the DOT put out a notice that if daily vehicle inspection reports had no violations that they were not required to be kept for a 3 Safety Pat Dullamonth period.  This was done in the interest of cutting down on paperwork.  At the same time the guidance given to the auditors was that in the event that a company has a roadside inspection and that inspection had violations on it that should have been picked up by the driver during the driver’s vehicle inspection and a review of the driver vehicle inspection report did not include this violation this could be viewed as a failure to complete a daily vehicle inspection and would be counted as a violation during an onsite audit.  This is considered to be a critical violation and therefore in an audit if  over 10% of the vehicle inspections checked were in violation it would drop Factor 4 for maintenance to a conditional.  Keep in mind that days where the driver had clean inspections would not be considered in this calculation.