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The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) maintains a list of violations and conditions that are so unsafe as to require that the vehicle be placed “out of service.”
If a vehicle is placed out of service, the motor carrier and driver are prohibited from driving or operating it for a specified period of time or until the condition is corrected.
Out-of-service criteria for drivers and commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) was originally created under the former Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety, which was a part of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The out-of-service criteria are now developed and maintained by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA). Each year committees of the CVSA consider and recommend modifications to the out-of-service criteria, which are accepted or rejected by a vote of the CVSA member jurisdictions. An annual edition of the out-of-service criteria is issued each year on April 1. The CVSA document is called the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria. It is a comprehensive list of items that roadside enforcement personnel look at when performing a roadside inspection on a CMV.
The document contains a listing of violations that are so unsafe that they must be corrected before operations can resume. During roadside inspections, federal, state, and local safety inspectors use the Out-of-Service Criteria as a guide in determining whether to place CMVs or drivers of CMVs out of service.
North American standard vehicle out-of-service criteria. The Vehicle segment of the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria contains sections on the following vehicle components:
Specific points of inspection are included in the individual sections of the criteria. Inspectors will use the detailed requirements when completing an inspection.