Insufficient Tread Prompted CVSA to Focus on Tires in This Year's Roadcheck

Tires will be the main emphasis of Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual RoadCheck during June 7-9. On May 11, CVSA conducted a webinar that detailed its choice of focus.

Nate Seymour of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said increased speed limits (17 states allow commercial vehicles to travel as fast as 75 mph ), increased front axle loads and increased uptime equipment utilization were the main reasons that tires have become an increasing worry. Tires were responsible for 13.9% of violations during CVSA’s estimated 4 million inspections for 2015, up from 10.1% in 2013.

Seymour noted that tread depth of less than 2/32 of an inch was the biggest problem with commercial vehicle tires, nearly three times as frequent as any other trouble area.

Roadcheck’s inspections slipped from 73,475 in 2014 to 69,472 in 2015. Out-of-service orders dropped from 35% in the program’s 1991 debut to 21.6% in 2015.