The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s testing of wireless roadside inspection technology will enter its third and final phase in December 2015, when it will over the course of a year perform roadside inspections of logbooks, licenses and more as trucks continue to move at highway speeds.
The agency has been working for several years to make wireless roadside inspections a reality. It has contracted Innovative Software Engineering to help it conduct the field test and to help the agency determine the viability of of WRIs.
Right now, 20 inspection sites in the southeast are ready for the field testing phase, including Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and North Carolina. The number of locations is expected to grow before the December 2015 testing begins.
ISE is working to build an interface for the agency’s WRI system. It will obtain the location of inspection sites to form “geofences.” When a truck crosses a geofence, software will transmit current logbook status and other credentials to the WRI system.
Information transmitted to enforcement personnel will notify them whether the vehicle and driver need to be pulled over for review.
If the driver is in compliance, he’ll be instantly green-lighted — via an in-cab notification — to bypass the inspection point. A red-light notification, however, would signal the driver to pull over.
Enforcers can update the fence locations, too, to create new inspection sites daily.
