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 month 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.