Heavy and Overweight Vehicle Defects Interim Report
- ORNL
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), along with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), has an interest in overweight commercial motor vehicles, how they affect infrastructure, and their impact on safety on the nation s highways. To assist both FHWA and FMCSA in obtaining more information related to this interest, data was collected and analyzed from two separate sources. A large scale nationwide data collection effort was facilitated by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance as part of a special study on overweight vehicles and an additional, smaller set, of data was collected from the state of Tennessee which included a much more detailed set of data. Over a six-month period, 1,873 Level I inspections were performed in 18 different states that volunteered to be a part of this study. Of the 1,873 inspections, a vehicle out-of-service (OOS) violation was found on 44.79% of the vehicles, a rate significantly higher than the national OOS rate of 27.23%. The main cause of a vehicle being placed OOS was brake-related defects, with approximately 30% of all vehicles having an OOS brake violation. Only about 4% of vehicles had an OOS tire violation, and even fewer had suspension and wheel violations. Vehicle weight violations were most common on an axle group as opposed to a gross vehicle weight violation. About two thirds of the vehicles cited with a weight violation were overweight on an axle group with an average amount of weight over the legal limit of about 2,000 lbs. Data collection is scheduled to continue through January 2014, with more potentially more states volunteering to collect data. More detailed data collections similar to the Tennessee data collection will also be performed in multiple states.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Work for Others (WFO)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1056994
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/TM-2012/575; 400407000
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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