News-Sentinel.com

Thursday, 03/18/1999

NAFTA

Inspector general expresses concerns about truck safety

By Deborah Martinez of Southwest Texas State University



News-Sentinel photo by C. Somodevilla
Inspecting Texas Department of Public Saf-ety trooper Roy Salazar makes a -- close inspection of a tractor-trailer truck that just crossed the bo-rder from Mexico into the United- States- at the Brownsville Port of Entry. The DPS has come under scrutiny for the amount of time it takes for trucks to be inspected. The troopers say that the thorough inspections are the only way to maintain safety on U.S. roads.

It could be a bald tire. It could be bad brakes. Or a leaking load of hazardous chemicals.

Any of those types of safety violations are enough to force a truck off the road. And in the view of Texas Department of Safety inspectors, trucks with those problems have no business on the road.

Truck safety violations can be deadly for the public, so the routine inspections state troopers conduct to monitor them are among the most important functions they perform.

In Texas, trucks coming from Mexico pose a bigger challenge for troopers. More than 2 million trucks cross the Texas border every year, said Maj. Lester Mills, who works in the DPS' traffic law enforcement division. Of those, he said about 5,900 are actually inspected.

A federal report from the inspector general found that about 50 percent were put out of service for severe violations in the 1997 fiscal year.

Combined, in the four states that border Mexico, 44 percent of the 17,332 trucks inspected at the border were put out of service, compared to 25 percent of U.S. trucks and 17 percent of Canadian trucks.

Fiscal year numbers for 1998 are still in their preliminary stages, but Barbara Cobble, a program director for federal highways in the office of the inspector general, said the numbers indicate the situation hasn't changed.

To warrant putting a truck out of service, Texas Trooper Roy Salazar said the violation would have to be a threat to other motorists on the road. Things such as several loose nuts on a tire that could cause the tire to fall off are a definite threat to public safety. If positioning parts in the truck's axle are out of sync, the truck automatically gets a red flag. An increase in truck traffic because of the NAFTA agreement that went into effect in 1994 has made troopers' jobs tougher. NAFTA-related traffic has made it necessary for licensing and weight division troopers to become better educated.

"There's maybe three times more traffic since NAFTA," said Salazar, a 16-year veteran of the Texas DPS who began working in the licensing and weight division 21/2 years ago. "We're trying the best we can."

The federal report cited an average growth in traffic of 10 percent per year beginning in 1993, from 2.5 million to 3.7 million in 1997.

Troopers are kept up to date on modifications to inspection procedures and new federal regulations at routine in-service training workshops held every two years by the DPS.

"I don't consider their job easy at all," said Trooper Adrian Rivera, who specializes in safety education at the McAllen DPS branch. "They're almost like mechanics in a way. They have to go through an intensive program to go into licensing and weight.

"And it's continual learning. If they don't pass, then they go back to highway patrol."

Capt. Robert Burroughs, who oversees the DPS' motor carrier bureau, said the number of troopers working at border inspection stations was doubled around the time NAFTA went into effect. Personnel numbers are currently about 77 strong.

Despite the DPS' effort to tighten inspections, truck inspection procedures at border checkpoints have been under fire recently. The inspector general's federal audit concluded that federal and state agencies did a poor job of inspecting trucks on the border.

The December 1998 audit, which surveyed 14 of the border's 28 crossings, also implied the American public's safety would be in even greater danger next year if the NAFTA agreement expands to allow Mexican trucks to travel into the U.S. interior.

If prior trends continue, traffic safety concerns will climb at the same time as international commercial truck traffic increases, the report said.

Canadian and American trucks are already allowed to freely travel within each other's interiors because the two countries outlined a uniform inspection and safety standards agreement for trucks and drivers in 1982.

Mexican trucks can only travel within the United States' commercial zone, which in most places is about a 20-mile radius from the U.S.-Mexican border.

While the inspector general's office, which is a part of the Department of Transportation, cannot be sure there will be an increased threat on U.S. highways next year, Cobble said the mere possibility is enough cause for alarm.

"We're not only responsible for the trucks from Mexico. We're also talking about our highways and our trucks on the back roads," Salazar said. "I'm not saying there's unsafe Mexican trucks on the road, but we're doing the best we can."

Conducted from November 1997 to September 1998, the audit followed standards prescribed by the U.S. Comptroller General.

Inspection procedures were more heavily criticized in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona than those in California. The audit also noted that, in anticipation of increased NAFTA traffic, two permanent inspection facilities have been built in California. New Mexico is building one, and Texas and Arizona don't have any.

Trooper Salazar said the audit does not show the entire picture.

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion," said Salazar, stationed outside his checkpoint at the Brownsville-Matamoros port of entry. "You can bend and twist statistics how you want."

In the future, when NAFTA is expanded to allow Mexican trucks to travel into the interior, Salazar expects there will be more troopers assigned to licensing and weight. For now, he said, they are doing what is humanly possible.

But to federal auditors, that means there is not enough being done. They said too few inspections were conducted, and those that did occur found a high number of trucks not in compliance with safety standards. Trucks that aren't inspected are just given the go-ahead to cross the border.

Again, Salazar said, an understaffed licensing and weight division is the main cause for the infrequent truck inspections. It is ideal to have no fewer than two officers on duty at a checkpoint, he said, but there just isn't enough manpower to do that most of the time.

It takes one inspector up to one hour to conduct a thorough and documented inspection. A trooper working an eight-hour shift feasibly could conduct only eight or nine inspections a day.

The average inspection takes 45 minutes alone. A truck in poor condition could take up to at least two hours. An average inspection will find several minor violations, such as a cracked reflector light or one loose lug nut. The violations are documented, and Salazar said troopers make it a point to pull that truck over next time it comes through their station.

Inspection stations randomly set up throughout the state are conducted differently, Salazar said. At this stage of the NAFTA agreement, other stations do not deal as much with Mexican trucks.

The idea that Mexican trucks are major threats to public safety is exaggerated to a point, said Salazar who works with a traffic load he believes to comprise 95 to 98 percent Mexican trucks. Americans shouldn't fear that the expansion of the NAFTA treaty in 2000 will let hundreds of unsafe Mexican trucks loose on the road.

Instead, Salazar said it is important to note that the safety standards of some American trucks need to be more closely watched. Sometimes it is the Americans who ignore the rules they have been drilled to know, he said.

"We find some American trucks that are even worse than Mexican trucks, and that's because they know," Salazar said. "They don't take the time because it means money."