OTA has been working with MTO these last few months to address needed changes to the commercial vehicle impoundment program (CVIP) as it relates to the practice of impounding vehicles for inoperative brakes when the vehicle condition is a result of driver error and not systemic maintenance negligence on the part of the carrier.
CVIP, first introduced in 1998, was originally planned as a corrective program to discourage vehicle owners and operators from running vehicles with critical defects. In 2012, CVIP was enhanced to include an “inoperative brake” as one of the critical brake defects for the purposes of commercial vehicle impoundment to address the number of inoperative brakes officers were finding as a result of airline defects, cam rollovers and valve defects.
Once the “inoperative brake” criterion was implemented, officers began to find trailers with all the wheel brakes inoperative as a result of a defect caused by driver error. For example, a glad hand not being connected or a brake valve in the wrong operating position. While any brake condition making a vehicle less safe should clearly be addressed, it has been recognized that the use of CVIP to address driver error does not meet the intended objective of the program.
As a result of concerns raised by OTA and working in constructive dialogue with MTO, policy changes have been made to enforcement of the CVIP Program. OTA received confirmation from MTO that effective July 29, 2014, officers will not impound a vehicle for “inoperative brakes” where the inoperative brake condition is caused by driver error and no other critical defect(s) exists on that vehicle. In these circumstances, officers have been instructed to take other appropriate enforcement action without impoundment.