Putting on the Brakes

With More Trucks on Roads, County Steps Up Efforts to Catch Unsafe Rigs

Bob Turney watches as sheriff's deputies Jim Kenna, left, and Clark Jackson inspect his truck at a checkpoint on Route 9 in Hillsboro. (By Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)

A white sun rose over the traffic jam on Route 9 in Hillsboro as the tractor-trailer was directed to a patch of roadside gravel. There, Chris Rizzo and his crew were ready to give it a once-over. Brakes, suspension, steering and weight -- the four-man truck-safety inspection team would check it all.

If recent history was any indication, the truck had better than a 1-in-3 chance of being sidelined for the day.

Rizzo, a Loudoun County sheriff's deputy, peered into a camcorder-like contraption pointed toward the truck's wheels. Called a thermal imager, it would tell him the condition of the brakes, the source of most violations: A white glow meant good. No glow meant bad.

"They've got a real good glow to them," Rizzo said.

The driver got good news: One rear brake light was out and a thick chain was poorly secured on the exposed truck bed, but he would get off with a warning. Two trucks that followed would not.

In fast-growing Loudoun County, one of the most vexing law enforcement problems is not murder, graft or carjacking.

It is trucks.

As new buildings sprout, speeding cement trucks and overburdened semis follow. On average, Rizzo said, at least 35 percent of trucks inspected at checkpoints by Loudoun deputies are too dangerous to be allowed to go farther.

Violations can have serious consequences. Unsecured loads fall off. Overweight trucks rip up roads. And failing brakes cause trucks to plow into other vehicles, which can be particularly deadly. According to Rizzo, a car-on-car collision has about a 1-in-1,200 chance of being fatal. A truck-on-car collision raises those odds to 1 in 9.

In recent weeks, at least four crashes have been caused by trucks with bad brakes, and all sent motorists to the hospital, Rizzo said.

"They all had several defects," he said of the trucks. "Any one of [the accidents] could have been a fatality."

The Sheriff's Office has stepped up enforcement to deal with the problem. Ten years ago, it had no full-time truck inspectors. Last year, it had two. This year, it has four. "We could probably keep 10 people busy," Rizzo said.