The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is conducting a field test to show the benefits of a national wireless roadside inspection system, according to Heavy Duty Trucking.
Such an inspection system would automatically collect information inspectors need about trucks, drivers and carriers as the truck is travelling on the highway.
As reported by HDT, the goal is to use commercial mobile radio service technology to scan the truck at highway speed, so compliant carriers don’t have to stop, says Chris Flanigan, manager of the wireless roadside inspection program at FMCSA.
The test, which is scheduled to be finished in 2017, will look about 1,000 trucks on 2,400 miles of roads linking Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee.
In a recent web presentation, Flanigan explained that the field test will use a wireless inspection processing system to shuttle data between the truck, the roadside facility, federal and state databases and the carrier.
“The (processing system) will have to do heavy lifting,” he said. “It will have to show that the system can manage the volume of data and provide a benefit to compliant carriers.”
Flanigan described a 10-step sequence that will happen as a truck passes an inspection facility, starting with the processing system where the data transfers will be automatically triggered, called geofence locations. These locations are transmitted to an operations center, which forwards them to the commercial mobile radio service, explains HDT.
When the truck enters the fenced area, the system scoops up the pertinent information, including driver credentials, hours of service and truck information, and sends it back to the operations center.
The operations center adds other data, such as carrier information it has retrieved from federal and state databases, and sends this safety data message to the processing system.
The system evaluates all of this information and sends the results back to the operations center, which forwards a message to the driver telling him he may continue or must pull in for inspection. This information also is sent to roadside inspection officials, and to FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System, the central database of the agency’s CSA enforcement system.
