INSPECTOR’S CORNER

How to Avoid Getting Stopped for Inspection

By Michael Trautwein, Senior Police Officer, Houston Police Department; North American Inspectors Championship Jimmy K. Ammons Grand Champion

As commercial motor vehicle inspectors, we must choose which vehicle to inspect. It can be a brand-new, clean truck with no obvious violations, or it can be a ough-looking older truck with a violation or two that can be spotted before the stop is made. All inspectors are different and may have their own items they look for when selecting a truck for inspection.

I work for the Houston Police Department. That means my truck selection pool is within the city limits of Houston, Texas. When people think of a department of transportation inspection, many think of a scale house on a highway. When I think of a truck pulling into a scale house, I picture the driver on their best behavior. Their seat belt is on, and their cell phone is tucked away. Both of their hands are on the wheel.

However, in Houston, we do not have a scale house or a dedicated inspection area. Our traffic is heavy and congested most of the time. If I decide to inspect a truck that is on a freeway, I will have the driver follow me to an empty parking lot as a safe inspection site. We also select trucks on city streets. There is a big difference between empty lots, city streets and the scale house.

At the scale house, the driver knows they are about to speak with a trooper. In the city, the driver has no advanced warning that an inspection or a traffic stop is about to happen. This, in my experience, leads to more “driver behavior violations” spotted by officers here in our city. In Houston, my favorite area to work is the northeast side of town. There are trucks everywhere of all shapes and sizes. You name it, you can find it in our city.

“Driver behavior violations” is a term I use in safety meetings while speaking to a group of drivers. These are violations that are created by the driver that can draw law enforcement’s attention and may result in a stop and inspection, with a possible ticket. Some examples of driver behavior violations are speeding, failing to signal a lane change or turn, failing to obey traffic-control signs, following too closely, not wearing a seat belt, using a cell phone for talking or texting, etc. If a driver refrains from these behaviors, they can reduce the chance of getting stopped, delayed, inspected and fined. No driver wants to be stopped. It slows down progress toward their destination. Additionally, if violations are discovered on an inspection, they can result in costly fines as well as discipline by the driver’s employer.

If the driver behavior category is good, there are some other things that can help avoid a stop. Fix any violation on the truck or trailer that is visible while travelling on the roadway. These items should be detected and corrected when the driver conducts a good pre-trip inspection. Some components to inspect for violations are lamps, tires, mud flaps on rearmost vehicle (required in Texas), license plates, vehicle markings, load securement, loose material, items mounted to the windshield, blocking the driver’s view, and window tint. For hazmat vehicles, examples also include placards, ID numbers, test date markings, emergency shutoff markings and additional markings on highpressure cargo tanks.

Avoiding inspection stops is pretty simple. If you can eliminate all the obvious violations that are clearly visible to an officer, then you may reduce your chances of being stopped. Of course, while you are attending to these visible details, you should attend to any issues that could make your vehicle less safe. In our Houston Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit, we have a mission statement: “Safe trucks driven safely.” If companies and drivers apply that statement to their daily operations, they will likely reduce their chances of being stopped for inspection.