January 4, 1999 6:15 PM, EST

Audit: Poor Truck Inspections at Border

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal and state governments are doing a poor job of inspecting trucks at the U.S.-Mexican border, an audit has found, and that could affect public safety next year when international trucking is slated to expand under the NAFTA agreement.

ne crossing, at El Paso, Texas, receives an average of 1,300 trucks daily. Federal auditors found that there was only one inspector, and he could look at only 10 to 14 trucks a day.

lsewhere, the auditors found that too few inspections were conducted, and those that did occur failed a high number of trucks. Trucks that aren't inspected are simply allowed to cross the border.

verall, 44 percent of the Mexican trucks inspected during the 1997 fiscal year were put out of service. By comparison, the failure rate was 25 percent for U.S. trucks and 17 percent for

anadian trucks.

"Truck accidents, although down in the last year or so, are still a major source of fatalities across the United States," Lawrence Weintrob, assistant inspector general for auditing at the

ransportation Department, said Monday. "If we don't ensure that the trucks coming up from Mexico meet our standards, the risk increases."

he United States and Canada have developed uniform inspection and safety standards for trucks and drivers. As a result, Canadian truckers enjoy unrestricted access to U.S. roads, subject, like U.S. truckers, to inspection by the states.

exico does not have a truck inspection program, so Mexican truckers are allowed to operate only in commercial zones extending from three miles to 20 miles north of the border. They are also subject to inspection at 28 border crossings: 16 in Texas, six in Arizona, four in California and two in New Mexico.

Under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, commercial trucks should be able to travel through the interiors of all three countries by Jan. 1, 2000. A similar provision allowing cross-border trucking within the U.S. and Mexican border states was to have taken effect in December 1995, but the Transportation Department delayed it indefinitely.